Chemical Processing of Waste Engineering Metal Materials

TECHNOLOGY LICENSING OPPORTUNITY

Chemical Processing of Waste Engineering Metal Materials

For general metal industry members who are dissatisfied with the cost of metal waste recycling. This technology provides a reprocessing method for transforming waste engineering metals and alloys to reusable materials.

Opportunity:   Idaho National Laboratory (INL), managed and operated by Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC (BEA), is offering the opportunity to enter into a license and/or collaborative research agreement to commercialize this chemical reprocessing of waste engineering metal materials.  

Overview:        This technology is a reprocessing scheme that can be incorporated in the existing process flowsheet to transform a host of waste engineering metals and alloys to reusable materials. Serious commitment to recycling has not yet attracted significant industry attention because of the cost of current processes. This technology is a relatively simple and yet inexpensive reprocessing scheme that can easily be incorporated into existing process flowsheets in a broad range of waste (oxidized) materials.

Description:    The waste material is subjected to heating under a continuous hydrogen flow at an elevated temperature to form a hydrided material, which is subjected to a pyrovacuum heating act to remove the hydrogen and form a pure metal material or a metal oxide. The waste material may contain partially or completely oxidized compounds of the metal. Depending on the chemical composition of the waste material, the metal oxide may be recovered by reacting the waste material with a reactive has or by cathodic polarization of the metal oxide in the motel salt electrolyte.

Benefits:          Benefits include:  

• Broad applicability to a wide range of waste materials
• Inexpensive
• Non-disruptive to existing processes.

Applications:   Applications include:  

• Metal Industries in general
• Aerospace
• Automotive
• Defense
• Biomedical

Development Status:  Experiments have been performed showing effective results and proof-of-concept.  

IP Status:        US Patent Application No. 62/887,436, “Methods of Forming a Metal Alloy, Methods of Forming Rare Earth Elements, and Methods of Recovering a Metal from a Waste Material,” BEA Docket No. BA-1053

INL is seeking to license the above intellectual property to a company with a demonstrated ability to bring such inventions to the market. Exclusive rights in defined fields of use may be available.

Please visit Technology Deployment’s website at https://inl.gov/inl-initiatives/technology-deployment for more information on working with INL and the industrial partnering and technology transfer process.

Companies interested in learning more about this licensing opportunity should contact Kala Majeti at td@inl.gov or 248-877-8866.