British Columbia funds new extraction technology
The British Columbia government has invested C$850,000 ($630,000) from the Province’s Innovative Clean Energy (ICE) Fund in cleantech startup pH7 Technologies to conduct a pilot project to process 5,000 kilograms per day of raw materials into approximately 2,500 kg of extracted platinum group metals per year.
Founded in 2020, pH7 is headquartered in Vancouver and was recently listed on the Cleantech Group’s 2024 Global Cleantech 100. The new process enables efficient metal extraction from low-grade resources or difficult substrates in a cost-effective way, it said.
The company has created a proprietary closed-loop process using advanced chemistry to extract and refine critical metals that will help the mining sector transition to renewable energy in an environmentally and economically sustainable way, the ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation said in a news release.
The metal alloys, including platinum group metals, copper, and tin, produced by pH7 are then refined by industrial customers. This method results in significantly less greenhouse gas emissions, electricity and water usage compared to mining or other recycling methods.
“B.C. is home to a growing clean-energy sector, accounting for 20% of Canada’s world-leading clean-tech firms that are having positive impacts globally,” Josie Osborne, Minister of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation said.
“With near net-zero environmental impact in the extraction of critical metals and minerals, pH7 is demonstrating the kind of innovative thinking that can transform mining around the world.”
Since 2008, the ICE Fund has committed approximately C$112 million ($83m) to support pre-commercial clean-energy technology projects, clean-energy vehicles, research and development, and energy-efficiency programs.
“The clean, green future we envision requires more critical metals than we have access to currently,” said Mohammad Doostmohammadi, founder and CEO of pH7 Technologies.
“Through innovation and collaboration, we look forward to bringing our clean-tech solution to help scale the extraction of metals and make existing processes much more sustainable and cost-effective.”