NREL's Specially Designed Proteins Can Harvest Critical Minerals From Waste Materials (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video NREL's Specially Designed Proteins Can Harvest Critical Minerals From Waste Materials.

This video discusses NREL's biohydrometallurgical metal extraction or separations project, part of NREL's bioenergy and bioeconomy research for mining, industry, and agriculture.

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We all know protein helps build muscle.

But did you know protein molecules could help extract the critical materials and metals we need for products like phones, supercomputers, batteries, lightbulbs, and power lines?

It turns out proteins have a surprising ability. Tucked within their complex structures are sites that can bind to specific metals—like the rare earth elements and precious metals we need to build and power homes, buildings, data centers, and vehicles.

The challenge is selectivity. If proteins could bind one metal over another, they could be used to harvest critical minerals from our waste materials: old electronics, mine tailings, and industrial byproducts.

Now, researchers at NREL are engineering hyper-selective proteins to reclaim metals like cobalt, gallium, and neodymium from our waste.

Using supercomputers, quantum mechanical simulations, and artificial intelligence (AI), NREL researchers are screening hundreds of thousands of metal-binding proteins to identify what structures help them form strong bonds with specific metals.

In the lab, researchers conduct high-throughput testing to rapidly evaluate AI-predicted protein libraries and identify the most promising candidates.

Then, they can make tiny modifications to the binding sites and design new proteins that can create strong, specific bonds with the critical metals our society needs most.

By passing mixed metal waste through a filtration system—chromatography columns containing the proteins—researchers can recover pure streams of individual metals.

If NREL's research team is successful, proteins could pave the way to domestic manufacturing of critical minerals sourced from waste products.

That means the materials we need for phones, vehicles, and manufacturing could become cheaper. It means we could improve domestic production of critical minerals … strengthen national security … and secure the supply chains of tomorrow.

A pretty big impact, from a little protein.

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[Text on screen: NREL logo]