Universal Mining: Halving the Cost of Everything
Summary:
The value of the raw elements in ore, dirt, and waste is around $1/kg, or $1,000/metric ton while the energy cost of chemical reduction is around $0.10/kg or $100/metric ton. Direct reduction dramatically reduces the cost of raw materials for manufacturing and construction, bypasses supply chains, and provides security of supply of low concentration elements including rare earth metals. This can roughly halve the cost of most goods, including energy, and enables high income countries to reclaim the technological lead. A large, fast, and well funded research, development, and commercialization effort is needed to quickly develop and scale these technologies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prices_of_chemical_elements
The opportunity:
On average the Earth’s crust consists of around 46% oxygen, 28% silicon, 8% aluminum, 6% iron, and 12% of all other elements, and the market value of these raw elements is around $1/kg, although more concentrated ores and some waste streams will have higher values. With colocated low-cost renewable energy the energy cost to reduce these feedstocks to raw elements, including high value trace elements, is around $0.10/kg, or one tenth the total market value. This presents a huge economic opportunity for revolutionizing materials production, which will dramatically reduce the cost of goods, reduce environmental impact, and end the tyranny of low concentration ore mining.
Molten oxide electrolysis, as developed by Blue Alchemist and Boston Metals, is a good example of this type of technology. Although molten oxide electrolysis generally suffers from high electrode costs and poor longevity. Molten oxide electrolysis typically operates at around 1,700℃ and requires highly inert electrodes, often using very expensive refractory metals like tantalum and iridium, effectively submerged in molten lava. Longevity can be limited and this is a general field of active research and development. Some very interesting possibilities have become apparent and this problem looks near term solvable. The impact of doing this will be truly world changing. For example, Blue Alchemist has demonstrated the ability to process a lunar regolith simulant directly into materials for solar cells, including silicon and metal components. Soon we will be able to directly and quickly produce solar and battery materials at large scale and much lower cost. This will substantially reduce energy costs, which is critically enabling for many other industries, including AI.
Diminishing ore quality:
With each passing year the quality of ore reduces, increasing the cost of mining and processing. Copper is a good example, the average concentration of copper ores is now below 0.6%. Given the inefficiencies of extraction this means that around 200 metric tons of ore needs to be moved and processed for every metric ton of copper produced. This also results in a very large environmental impact per unit of production. The energy cost of the entire supply chain for most metals is around 5x to 10x the energy cost of the chemical reduction process. The solution to this fundamental problem of diminishing returns is to reduce all of an ore to its constituent elements, thereby maximizing the financial value returned per unit of ore and bypassing expensive, insecure, and high environmental impact supply chains. For example, rare earth element production becomes a trace element byproduct of bulk mining processes. This solves the rare earth production and processing problem enabling self-sufficiency in rare earth metals. Greatly reducing costs and providing supply chain security.
While this process might operate economically using common dirt as a feedstock, in some cases enabling colocation of mining and manufacturing, higher concentration ores are still likely to generate higher value. Most common elements will be produced as a byproduct of higher value element production. For example, silicon is extremely common and the global market is only in the $10 billion/year range, a market that would soon become saturated. Although with the insatiable appetite of AI, and low-cost solar energy and battery storage to power it, the market for silicon might quickly increase ten to a hundred fold. This approach is also highly applicable to recycling and the processing of contaminated or toxic materials and sites, reducing the need for virgin ores. Waste streams become highly valuable ores and given that these waste streams often have negative values, where processing can generate additional revenue, this can greatly improve the overall economics while also solving problematic environmental hazards. Some technologies of this nature might even be applied to nuclear waste.
Low-cost energy:
Low-cost renewable electrical energy has made universal mining viable. Large scale solar energy can cost $0.02/kWh or even less. Without subsidy, rooftop solar in Australia is now as low as $0.03/kWh USD. Large battery systems in China now cost as little as $65/kWh, which corresponds to around $0.02/kWh per discharge cycle. Australia is already experiencing substantial periods of negative electricity prices. Further, universal mining systems are very high power and can potentially have low capital costs such that it becomes viable to only operate them during the middle of the day when electricity prices are near zero. Colocation of universal mining systems with solar power is critical to achieve low energy costs. Grid costs in the U.S average around $0.08/kWh and make many energy intensive technologies cost prohibitive.
With mass production the cost of goods approaches materials costs. Universal mining might halve the cost of materials which will then result in a near halving of the cost of solar energy, batteries, logistics, data centers (AI), robots, and so on and so forth. Halving the cost of energy will further lead to a dramatic drop in the cost of the universal mining systems. This is a virtuous feedback loop. Universal mining is on the critical path to materials and energy abundance. This technology mitigates many of the inverse economies of scale cost disadvantages of small scale distributed manufacturing, enabling small high technology manufacturing companies to succeed in a globally competitive market place. Like AI the timeline for doing this is measured in months, not years, and scaling rates of around 10x per year and higher are needed. Universal mining enables much faster scaling rates in almost all technology fields, including universal mining.
Minimizing supply chain costs:
One of the primary advantages of universal mining is that it is a distributed technology that bypasses the time and cost of supply chains. The supply chains for many materials can take months and often entail extensive and insecure logistics and processing in multiple locations. The energy cost of the supply chain is often on the order of 5x to 10x the direct energy cost of chemical reduction. For example, aluminum oxide and iron oxide are mined, processed, and shipped all over the world for further processing and eventual reduction to produce aluminum and steel. Universal mining can produce aluminum and steel directly on or near site, eliminating most of these costs. Universal mining does not even have to be very efficient, as it is the energy use of the total supply chain that dominates, and this is what we are trying to minimize. Supply chains are one of the primary sources of cost saving. The other is that orders of magnitude less ore needs to be processed to provide the same value due to the additional revenue from producing many other elements as well. For example, in the case of copper ore, around a 100 metric ton of other elements, excluding oxygen and including silicon and metals, might be produced at the same time. This greatly reduces the total quantity of ore that must be processed to produce all of our materials, it also largely eliminates mining tailings and the costly environmental mitigation this requires.
Technical challenges:
There are two primary technical challenges associated with universal mining, first the removal of oxygen, and second the separation of elements. Without revealing specific details, brute-force, high-power, low-cost, and long-lived methods can now be applied to both of these problems. Higher purities generally cost more and in some cases a universal mining system might serve as a producer of high value concentrated metal mixes, as a byproduct of bulk metal production, that might then be shipped to a specialist purification plant. With highly concentrated high value feedstocks these specialist plants can be much more economic and logistics is less expensive. There are also possibilities of directly integrating high throughput multi-element 3D printing technologies into some of these universal mining processes. Dirt and electricity could go in with 3D printed parts coming out directly. Mining, materials processing, and manufacturing could be vertically integrated within a device that itself could be mass manufactured at low-cost. Advances in AI make many more of these systems possible and economically competitive.
Impact:
Energy and resources are the primary constraints of life and economic prosperity. Universal mining enables dramatic expansion and cost reduction of materials production and by extension everything made from materials including energy generation and energy storage systems. This is worth a more than 2x increase in global GDP, or a more than doubling of prosperity. And this ignores the non-linear benefits of universal mining that will enable completely new and highly disruptive technologies including much faster and more extensive scaling of AI and associated systems. Universal mining is a big step towards the direct automated onsite conversion of raw resources into machinery and infrastructure, bypassing existing supply chains and overcoming resource scarcity. It is where the future is heading. Universal mining will quickly scale exponentially leading to virtual monopolies for whoever gets there first, and this will extend to the scaling of most every other new industry, including AI. Universal mining is a critical enabling technology that will vertically integrate with almost every industry. Whoever develops this technology first wins.
Status:
This technology is not currently under active development due to a lack of funding. Some very interesting potential technical pathways to enabling this technology have been found but they have not been revealed here due to a lack of patent protection. It is hoped that this will change and patent protection will be gained at some point in the not too distant future, at which point technical details might be verified and revealed. In the mean time, many other companies are working on various aspects of these problems and at some point someone will likely be successful, which should benefit everyone.