Media Contact
China has moved to ban exports of rare minerals to the U.S., including those the U.S. needs to build things like solar panels, semiconductors and military equipment.
Buz Barstow
Assistant Professor, Biological and Environmental Engineering, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Buz Barstow is a physicist using synthetic biology to build sustainable energy technologies. He is developing a “microbe-mineral atlas” to help researchers use microorganisms to more sustainably mine critical metals, and has identified bacteria that could improve rare-earth processing.
Barstow says:
“The U.S. is way better positioned to deal with this ban than it was in 2011, when there was the first export ban from China. We’ve known this problem is coming. While supply is far more diversified than it was back then, it’s nowhere near diversified enough.
“Mining in the U.S. is happening again, at Mountain Pass and at new developments like Halleck Creek. A key challenge is processing. We’ve been developing new environmentally friendly techniques like biomining and bioseparations, but these aren’t ready today. Inertia is always the problem in development of new technologies.
“But, this step from China will encourage us to get our act together on further developing and deploying advanced technologies for processing.”
