Start up processing lead mining waste piles for valuable metals. Pilot plant running. Will also process lithium batteries. Financing found to build plant.
“Missouri Cobalt, which bills itself as the owner of North America’s largest near-term primary cobalt reserve, and is the leading entity under its Clayton-based parent company, U.S. Strategic Metals.”
“The group received $450,000 to develop plans to help build out the industry”
" Last month, Missouri Cobalt’s parent company announced that it had secured more than $200 million from a British mining financier, putting the Fredericktown project on track to start processing more than 200 tons of material each day, by year’s end."
Several methods exist to separate cobalt from copper and nickel, depending on the concentration of cobalt and the exact composition of the used ore. One method is froth flotation, in which surfactants bind to ore components, leading to an enrichment of cobalt ores. Subsequent roasting converts the ores to cobalt sulfate, and the copper and the iron are oxidized to the oxide. Leaching with water extracts the sulfate together with the arsenates. The residues are further leached with sulfuric acid, yielding a solution of copper sulfate. Cobalt can also be leached from the slag of copper smelting.[75]
Sounds messy and likely to produce waste streams. But that is always the case with minerals processing. Maybe the reason we think mining is too dirty for the US. Rather buy from China.
Using theirs they got some dollars. Those dollars are an interest-free loan to be spent with us after inflation later. That is why the USD is the main reserve currency.