SBIR Phase I: Clean Iron and Nickel Powder Production for Steel Construction on the Meridiani Planum of Mars and Cathode Manufacture for Lithium-Ion Batteries on Earth

小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是一项探索地球和火星上无处不在的铁的效用的技术。许多金属的矿石是富含铁的混合材料，包括对可持续未来至关重要的33种以上金属的矿石。然而，铁含量高对大多数现有的金属提取来说是一种滋扰。例如，铁、稀土元素和未提取的铝留在铝饲料加工产生的巨大尾矿库中。该项目开发了一种更好的方法来处理许多混合材料的工业废物和矿石。这种方法被称为快速铁羰化，预计将降低铁和镍粉的成本，通过更好的稀土元素和许多其他能源金属精矿来增加附加值，并清理金属加工和废物处理场所。这一过程将以廉价和有利可图的方式生产用于电池制造的金属饲料，并实现清洁电力运输的好处。基于快速碳化铁的炼钢硬件坚固耐用，操作简单，重量轻。该SBIR一期项目开发并测试了一种用于进行快速铁羰化反应的反应器。铁和镍的羰化反应是可逆的放热的气/固反应。在最先进的工业规模的反应器中，羰化反应严重受阻，以至于在大规模情况下，实现高单位体积反应速率是具有挑战性的。拟议的快速铁羰基化反应器寻求将可逆反应推向远离平衡的状态，以实现至少比最先进的羰化反应快10倍的净羰基生成。该项目将对相关的混合材料金属矿石和工业废物进行测试，规模远远大于典型的台式实验(~5公斤样品)。这些测试旨在提取测试样品中近100%的铁和镍，并产生可容易加工的残留物，以生产高价值的稀土元素和其他关键金属精矿。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is a technology to explore the utility in the ubiquity of iron on both Earth and Mars. The ores of many metals are iron-rich, mixed materials, including those of 33+ metals critical for a sustainable future. However, high iron content is a nuisance for most established metal extractions. For example, iron, rare earth elements, and unextracted aluminum remain in the vast tailing ponds generated by aluminum feed processing. This project develops a better method for processing many mixed-material industrial wastes and ores. The method is called fast iron carbonylation and is expected to lower the cost of iron and nickel powders, add value by making better concentrates of rare earth elements and many other energy metals, and clean up metal processing and waste sites. This process will inexpensively and profitably produce metal feeds for battery manufacturing and enable the benefits of clean electric transport. The fast iron carbonylation-based steel-making hardware is rugged, simple-to-operate, and light weight. This SBIR Phase I project develops and tests a reactor to carry out fast iron carbonylation. Iron and nickel carbonylation are reversible, exothermic gas/solid reactions. Carbonylation in state-of-the-art, industrial-scale reactors is significantly impeded such that, at large scales, achieving high per-unit volume reaction rates is challenging. The proposed fast iron carbonylation reactor seeks to drive the reversible reactions far from equilibrium to achieve net carbonyl production at least 10 times faster than state-of-the-art carbonylation. The project will run tests on relevant mixed-material metal ores and industrial wastes at scales much larger than are typical for benchtop experiments (~5 kg samples). These tests aim to extract close to 100% of the iron and nickel in the test samples and produce residues that can be readily processed to produce high value concentrates of rare earth elements and other critical metals.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.