Newswise — Labeled glass containers full of liquids stirred by spinning magnets are connected to humming machines with neatly organized tubes. Here in this lab space at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), scientists are pioneering ways to extract critical materials from recycled waste products.

Critical materials are essential to modern life because they possess properties that make them difficult to replace. They’re used in smartphones, satellites, computer chips, rechargeable batteries, fighter jets, advanced weapons systems and other technologies. But they can be hard to find; that’s where INL’s research comes in.

The national challenge

The U.S. has deposits of nearly all critical materials, but mining capabilities cannot meet the nation’s growing demand. Most extraction and processing are done overseas, much of it in China. This reliance on foreign critical materials risks supply disruptions that could affect U.S. national security, economic growth and everyday life. After mining, rocks are crushed and processed to separate valuable materials from waste. This step, called beneficiation, prepares the material for further refining. These materials are then concentrated for easier transport and treated with heat or chemicals to fully extract and purify them. However, modern processing isn’t always sufficient and often produces significant waste.

In copper mines, for example, the ore contains up to 0.2% copper, meaning about 99.8% of the rock is discarded. That waste still contains other metals and critical materials, but most processing facilities are only designed to extract one or two materials.

The critical materials in discarded rocks, e-waste and other sources don’t degrade over time and can be recovered. However, the U.S. lacks the infrastructure to recycle them.

Recycling facilities could tap into these largely untouched sources, helping meet U.S. demand. These facilities could be built far more quickly than new mines, which can take over a decade due to permitting, costs and infrastructure needs.

“The U.S. doesn’t recycle well,” said Bob Fox, a senior manager at INL. “There’s a willingness to recover critical materials from recycled sources, but there’s no infrastructure or market for it. Right now, critical materials recycling doesn’t have the economic incentives to drive infrastructure development.”

INL is working to change that by making recycling more efficient, less energy-intensive and economically viable.

“Recycling represents a crucial pathway for the U.S. to obtain critical materials, including rare earth elements like dysprosium,” said Arindam Mukhopadhyay, a staff scientist at INL. “Even critical materials we mine domestically, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese, can be recovered through recycling.”

INL’s recycling research

Since the early 2010s, INL has developed technologies that reduce chemical use, energy consumption and waste, making recycling more sustainable and cost-effective. These innovations improve recovery from sources such as electronic and agricultural waste, mine tailings and industrial wastewater.

“INL has developed a comprehensive portfolio of critical materials recycling technologies,” said Mukhopadhyay. “We have the expertise and proven processes to help make recycling economically competitive, which is essential for building a reliable domestic supply of the materials our nation depends on.”

One area INL has worked in for many years is biohydrometallurgy, which uses biological systems to dissolve and recover metals. INL’s research examines how microbial populations fed agricultural or municipal waste biomass produce organic acids that break down metals in both metallic and mineral forms. These biologically produced acids dissolve the material and release valuable metals such as rare earth elements, cobalt and lithium. The dissolved metals can then be recovered from the liquid using natural biology-based molecules instead of man-made chemicals. INL’s work is improving the efficiency, effectiveness and affordability of biohydrometallurgy and offers a promising, cost-effective alternative to harsh chemical reagents.

Ether-based Aqueous Separation and Extraction (EASE) uses water-soluble, ether-based chemicals that pull specific materials from mixtures to recover critical materials from industrial wastewater, desalination brines, mine runoff and geothermal fluids. This process uses less energy and fewer chemicals than conventional extraction methods and produces less waste.

Another area of innovation is INL’s electrochemistry work. Electrochemistry uses electricity to trigger chemical reactions that separate and recover critical materials from waste.

Electrons are easier and less expensive to generate than the chemicals required for traditional extraction methods. Electrochemistry can reduce the use of chemicals, some of which can be toxic, by 88% to 90%, and the process uses up to 75% less energy.

Electrochemical Leach (EC-Leach)

EC-Leach uses electricity to cause chemical reactions in liquids to extract critical materials like lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese. The process was originally developed to extract critical materials from used lithium-ion batteries, but INL is adapting it for mining applications.

Pilot systems show EC-Leach can recover more than 95% of these critical materials. INL researchers are working to scale this technology for commercial deployment.

Electrochemical Recycling of Electronic Constituents of Value (E-RECOV)

E-RECOV uses an electrochemical cell to recover critical materials from electronic scrap. Electrochemical cells use chemical reactions to produce electricity used in electrochemistry. E-RECOV operates at room temperature, uses up to 75% fewer chemicals than traditional processes and doesn’t produce toxic emissions.

The technology has received a TechConnect National Innovation Award and was a finalist for an R&D 100 Award. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute supports the development of TechConnect.

Free Flowing Electrophoretic System (FFES)

The FFE unit uses an electric field with tailored ligand systems (small molecules that bind to metal ions) to separate critical materials from complex mixtures into distinct, isolated streams. The device can be moved closer to, or into, mines to separate critical materials from metal-rich liquids.

Electrochemical Membrane Reactor

Researchers at INL developed an electrochemical membrane reactor that removes contaminants from spent lithium-ion battery leachates, the mineral-rich liquids produced during recycling. The reactor recovers more than 95% of valuable metals such as nickel and cobalt using only water, air and electricity. It also produces acid that can be reused in the extraction process. The system has the potential to serve as a cost-effective closed-loop solution for recycling critical materials from batteries.

Improving purity

Most modern applications need critical materials to be at 99.999% purity or higher, but most conventional separation processing can only achieve 85% to 95% purity unless the process is run over weeks or months. INL’s electrochemical work can achieve 99.9999% purity in fewer cycles, dramatically reducing processing time and costs.

Rare Earth Element-Metal (RE-Metal)

RE-Metal is a process that recovers rare earth elements from waste materials using electricity. First, the elements are dissolved using nontoxic solutions. Then an electric current is applied to turn the dissolved materials into solid metal on an electrode.

Other projects include generating hydrogen peroxide from air to help dissolve minerals and separating graphite, copper and arsenic while immobilizing toxic chemicals.

Real-world impact

“Our goal is to make recycling economically viable,” said Mukhopadhyay. “To do that, we’ve focused on reducing chemical use, energy consumption and waste generation while maximizing recovery rates.”

INL’s technologies offer cost-effective options to secure the domestic critical materials supply chain and meet the nation’s growing demand. By advancing recycling and recovery methods, INL helps ensure the U.S. has the materials it needs to overcome current and future challenges.

About Idaho National Laboratory

Battelle Energy Alliance manages INL for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. INL is the nation’s center for nuclear energy research and development, and also performs research in each of DOE’s strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and the environment. For more information, visit www.inl.gov.

Follow us on social media:

Facebook X-twitter Youtube Instagram Linkedin Pinterest Flickr

Newswise — UPTON, N.Y. — Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory developed a new machine learning framework that can accelerate the search for better catalysts  — the materials that speed up chemical reactions — and offer more reliable results.

Finding high-performing catalysts, which are used to accelerate processes from chemical manufacturing to energy production, can be a slow, expensive process, often relying on years of trial-and-error or massive computational resources. To add to the difficulty, ideal catalyst candidates are rare.

“Imagine driving somewhere new without using GPS,” said Brookhaven Lab chemist Wenjie Liao. “You’ll probably get there eventually, but you’ll take long detours and waste time. The discovery of catalysts can be like that.”

Researchers in the Catalysis Reactivity and Structure group in Brookhaven Lab’s Chemistry Division tackled those discovery challenges with a new multi-layer machine learning approach that screens catalysts step by step, mimicking how scientists evaluate performance in real experiments.

The team successfully used the chemical conversion of carbon dioxide (CO₂) to methanol — a type of alcohol that can be used as fuel — as a case study for the new approach, which outperformed conventional models. The study also shed new light on how scientists can control key chemical reactions steps that tune two important features that make for an effective catalyst in that process: activity and selectivity.

A paper describing their work was recently published in Chem Catalysis.

The best catalysts must be active enough to drive reactions efficiently, but selective enough to favor the desired product over unwanted byproducts.

“Highly active and selective catalysts save energy and costs,” said Brookhaven Lab chemist Ping Liu, who is also an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University. “An active catalyst means it doesn’t require high pressure or high temperatures to speed up a reaction, and a selective catalyst means it doesn’t require purification, which can be costly, to get the product you want.”

Machine learning models promise faster catalyst discovery, but they face hurdles that the Brookhaven scientists set out to overcome in their study. Existing single-layer models have been limited by high costs to generate large databases needed for analysis, low data quality and uneven spread of data, the researchers said. Additionally, conventional models have not been trained with a chemical understanding to make accurate predictions about catalysts.

“Simpler one-layer models overlook the domain expertise need to reliably predict a good catalyst,” Liu said. “Based on all these limitations, we developed a multi-layer binary machine learning approach that targets complex reaction networks for real catalysis, which has never been considered before in this kind of model.”

Case study: turning CO₂ into methanol

Instead of asking a single model to predict catalyst performance all at once, the Brookhaven team’s method breaks the problem into a series of simpler decisions. To test their approach, the researchers studied the performance of copper-based catalysts used to convert CO₂ into methanol.

The researchers trained multiple models using synthetic datasets generated from kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, which meant for a low computational cost, according to the study. These simulations capture how chemical reactions unfold over time, including competition between multiple reaction pathways — an important feature often missing from simpler models.

“This helps improve the accuracy and reliability of the model,” said An Nguyen, a visiting graduate student from Stony Brook University. “Each layer is related to how we think about catalysts as chemists, how we break it in down into different categories with chemical or catalysis understanding.”

In their case study, the researchers’ multi-layer approach asked whether a catalyst could drive the reaction to convert CO₂ to methanol, a desired product, and if it performed as well as — or even better than — the copper-based catalyst widely used in industrial and academic applications.

Applying the new framework, the team successfully screened catalyst designs that were both more active and more selective than copper catalysts. The method consistently outperformed conventional single-layer machine learning models, which struggled to find rare, high-performing candidates.

The framework also revealed which reaction steps mattered most. The analysis showed that transitions between competing reaction pathways — rather than individual steps alone — play a critical role in controlling both activity and selectivity.

“The multilayer approach allows us to dig deeper into the understanding between what we identified as key features and reaction behaviors,” Liu said. “We identified key steps that control both the activity and selectivity for CO₂ to methanol, providing new insight into this process.”

The process of converting CO₂ into methanol, known as hydrogenation, is already a commercial process. This work could be a step towards improving the workflow for industry partners, the researchers said. The framework can be adapted to other processes.

To develop the new framework, the researchers used computational resources from the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, a DOE Office of Science user facility at Brookhaven; the Scientific Computing and Data Facilities at Brookhaven; and SeaWulf, a high-performance computing cluster at Stony Brook University.

The research was supported by the DOE Office of Science.

Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.

Follow @BrookhavenLab on social media. Find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and Facebook.

EXCLUSIVE: Despite the ongoing conflict in Iran, President Donald Trump’s “energy czar,” Doug Burgum, is confident the “temporary blip up” in gas and energy prices facing Americans will come back down very soon as the president’s “drill baby drill” agenda takes effect.

In an interview with Fox News Digital, Burgum, who leads the Interior Department and chair of Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council, said: “It’s all about supply.”

“You want prices to go down? Supply has got to go up,” he said. To this end, he said his agency approved a record 6,000-plus drilling permits on U.S. soil, reversing the Biden administration’s trend of increased regulation that he said had stunted the country’s energy independence.

“We have a temporary blip up now because of the conflict in the Middle East, but as you heard the news earlier this morning, energy prices dropped a lot today, and stock markets [are] up and energy prices down; those are all positive things for working Americans to have those two things happening simultaneously,” he said.

TRUMP’S IRAN STRATEGY SHOWCASES ‘DOCTRINE OF UNPREDICTABILITY’ AMID STRIKE THREATS AND SUDDEN PAUSE

Interior Secretary and Trump energy czar Doug Burgum (left) is confident that President Donald Trump’s “drill baby drill” agenda will quickly overcome the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz (center) due to the Iran conflict. (Federico PARRA / AFP via Getty Images; Stringer/REUTERS; Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo)

Despite criticism of the president’s actions on the global stage, Burgum said these moves, such as the military intervention in Venezuela and negotiations with leadership, are going to help reduce prices for Americans.

“What happened in Venezuela actually helps Americans a lot because now we’ve got Venezuelan oil flowing towards Gulf of America refineries in Louisiana and Texas,” he said.

Another major policy shift Burgum said he expects to make a big difference for Americans is the administration’s actions to “unleash Alaska.”

“The Biden administration had taken over 70 legal actions, executive orders from President Biden to regulatory actions, which were essentially sanctioning Alaska more than we sanctioned Iran during the last administration,” he explained.

Pressed on when Americans can expect to start seeing prices tick back down, Burgum said, “I think we started to see how they were happening and they happened quite effectively over the first year of the Trump administration.” He also pointed out that prices “vary a lot” depending on which state you live in and the extent of regulation and taxes placed on oil and gas production.

“Consumers need to understand that it is not just federal action, but it’s state and local action that’s often driving up the cost of your energy,” he said. “It’s not quite as simple as red state versus blue state. But if you take a look at gas prices before the war, red states were among all the lowest states in the country, blue states were among the highest in terms of that. And it was a reflection of the policies of those state legislatures and those governors that were driving energy prices up.”

US AND IRAN SEND CONFLICTING SIGNALS ON TALKS TO END THE WAR

Rocket trails are seen in the sky amid a fresh barrage of Iranian missile attacks above the Israeli coastal city of Netanya, on March 17, 2026. (Jack Guez / AFP)

As an example, he said that just a month ago, gas prices in Iowa were under $2 per gallon, while the price in California was $5.

“California imports 63 percent of its oil from foreign countries,” he explained, adding, “At the time of this breakout with Iran … California, by their own data, provided by the state of California, the number one country they were importing oil from in California was from Iraq.”

“They always brag about, ‘Oh, if we were a country, we’d have one of the world’s largest economies.’ And if they were a county, they would have designed for themselves one of the most energy-dependent and energy-expensive economies,” he said of California.

“They’re not saving the planet by using foreign oil in California when you could have been getting clean, reliable, affordable energy, say from the Permian Basin in Texas or New Mexico,” he continued. “When you think you’re saving the planet by blocking U.S. infrastructure, you artificially raise the prices.”

To push back on this, Burgum said that, authorized by Trump’s energy emergency declaration, Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently ordered California to reopen its Santa Ynez pipeline system to resume pumping domestic offshore oil. The order is being challenged by California in court; however, oil has already begun being pumped.

IRAN CHOKES STRAIT OF HORMUZ WITH REPORTED $2M TANKER TOLL, REGIME THREATENS GLOBAL OIL SUPPLY

Surfers wait for waves on El Porto Beach as crude oil tanker “Chios” has its cargo pumped into the Chevron Products Company refinery, one of California’s largest petroleum processing facilities, in El Segundo, Calif., on March 4, 2026. (Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo)

He framed the administration’s “energy abundance” agenda as a move back to reality after four years of “climate fantasy” under former President Joe Biden. This move, he said, stands in stark opposition to policies still being pursued in blue states like California.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

“We’re focused on energy reality, which is all Americans deserve and need to have reliable, affordable, and secure energy,” he said. “We’re fighting for every citizen in the country, regardless of what state regime they’re under. Because like I said, every American, no matter where you live, deserves to have affordable, reliable, and nationally secure energy.”  

Fox News Digital reached out to spokespeople for Biden and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

America’s nuclear renaissance will not be built in Washington alone. Just as the states that had the foresight to build today’s nuclear fleet enjoy its benefits, the states that rebuild our nuclear industrial base will reap the rewards of its resurgence. President Donald Trump understands this truth, which is why he took executive action last May to give states the lead in reinvigorating our nuclear industrial base.

Since then, the Department of Energy has developed a clear framework focused on driving state-led efforts to reestablish the full nuclear fuel cycle at home and revitalize the American nuclear industry.

The Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus concept proposes state hubs that align local and federal resources to expand regional industrial capacity, drive economic growth and restore technological leadership in this critically important field.

This state-led model builds upon America’s past success, when the nation once built a thriving, fully integrated national nuclear enterprise. At the height of America’s nuclear buildout in the 1960s and 1970s, reactors were rising from North Carolina to Arkansas while domestic enrichment in Kentucky and Ohio, fuel fabrication in Washington and South Carolina, and commercial reprocessing in New York supported a closed fuel cycle.

US POWER CRUNCH LOOMS AS OKLO CEO SAYS GRID CAN’T KEEP UP WITHOUT NEW INVESTMENT

President Donald Trump is backing a state-based system to restore American nuclear dominance. (Getty Images)

In these and other host states, nuclear development built enduring infrastructure, highly specialized workforces, and technical expertise that sustained the industry for decades. From heavy reactor vessels forged in Pennsylvania to advanced control systems and specialty materials manufactured across the Midwest, the nuclear enterprise anchored regional industry and strengthened local economies.

In the decades that followed, this integrated enterprise withered, its decline driven by an increasingly burdensome and unpredictable regulatory environment and unfavorable public opinion that made nuclear uncompetitive in a world of cheap natural gas and deregulated electricity markets.

In 1977, the Carter administration further worsened the environment by deferring commercial reprocessing amid proliferation concerns. That decision contributed to growing waste inventories across our country, even as our allies have demonstrated safe and secure fuel recycling for decades.

TRUMP ADMIN POURS $1B INTO MASSIVE EFFORT TO RESTART NUCLEAR REACTOR AT HISTORIC MELTDOWN SITE

Over time, domestic enrichment capacity declined, fuel fabrication and conversion capabilities consolidated, and specialized manufacturing migrated or disappeared, eroding the industrial base that had once sustained a full nuclear lifecycle.

As the U.S. stepped back from fuel-cycle integration, competitors built vertically integrated nuclear industries that combined fuel services, reactor construction and long-term support, usurping our leadership in the global nuclear market.

Advanced technical capability cannot be rebuilt one component at a time across a fragmented industrial base. The United States has seen this dynamic in other sectors, from semiconductors to aerospace and biotechnology, where co-location of research, production and skilled labor accelerates innovation and builds durable expertise. Rebuilding that capability in the United States will require regional clusters where these functions co-locate, talent pipelines mature and supply chains regain scale.

DEPARTMENT OF WAR TRANSPORTS NEXT-GENERATION REACTOR IN NUCLEAR ENERGY MILESTONE

The Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus model provides a practical path forward. State-led hubs would bring together fuel fabrication and recycling technologies, advanced reactor demonstration, materials testing, waste management solutions and workforce training within a regional ecosystem.

Private sector funding would accelerate commercialization across the supply chain, rebuilding domestic fuel-cycle capabilities right on campus. States that step forward stand to attract high-skill jobs, anchor advanced manufacturing, and position their communities at the center of a secure and resilient nuclear enterprise.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION

The Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus concept proposes state hubs that align local and federal resources to expand regional industrial capacity, drive economic growth and restore technological leadership in this critically important field.

Rebuilding the nuclear fuel cycle is not merely a domestic industrial objective. It is a matter of national sovereignty. Today, Russia controls roughly 40% of global enrichment capacity and remains a significant supplier of reactor fuel to utilities in both the U.S. and Europe. As the U.S. and its allies work to reduce reliance on Russian fuel services over the coming years, a strong domestic fuel supply will be needed.

Under Secretary Chris Wright’s leadership, the Department of Energy has taken significant action to that point, expanding domestic enrichment capacity, strengthening allied supply chains and supporting the production of high-assay low-enriched uranium.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Many advanced reactor designs can utilize recycled fuels and alternative fuel forms, creating pathways to reduce waste and recover usable materials. Restoring domestic fuel-cycle capability through Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses would strengthen energy security, support defense requirements, and ensure the U.S. retains control over a critical technology.

America’s nuclear renaissance will be led by the states that choose to build it. Early leaders will attract investment, talent and supply chains essential to national security, demonstrating what is possible for others to follow. Competitive federalism has long driven American innovation. Applied to nuclear energy, it can restore industrial power, secure the fuel cycle, and strengthen the nation.