He’s looking for the key minerals — cobalt, copper and nickel — that go into the batteries that can power clean energy technologies, particularly the incoming demand fromThat is why in August he watched as a helicopter flew past with a massive metal detector swinging beneath it, scanning a vast section of this remote Canadian wilderness.
In northern Chile, Wealth Minerals, which is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, owns rights to a lithium mining claim right between two established, productive lithium mines. The traditional method of extraction is to remove brine containing lithium and let the water evaporate out to then separate the usable metal.“That’s become a little bit of a swear word,” said Henk van Alphen, CEO of Wealth Minerals. “You don’t really evaporate water in one of the driest regions in the world.
House believes they can avoid some of those challenges by exploring only in areas that approve of mining from the start, applying KoBold’s proprietary technology to speed up the discovery process. “The faster you can target, the faster you can fail, and ultimately the more likely you’re going to be successful,” Enders, who is not affiliated with KoBold, said.In January, General Motors rocked the auto industry when it announced the company would sell only zero-emission passenger vehicles by 2035. On its way to electrification, GM has reduced its cobalt use by 70 percent along with other companies that have faced headwinds about the most common source of the mineral.