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Tag: United States

Travertine starts operation of demonstration plant

Travertine Technologies, Inc., has began operations at its demonstration plant in New York state. The core Travertine process demonstrated at this plant combines three major unit operations: salt-splitting electrolysis, caustic direct air capture, and mineralisation. This process produces sulphuric acid, calcium carbonate, and green hydrogen from waste gypsum and carbon dioxide captured directly from the air. The demonstration plant will produce 125 t/a of sulfuric acid, 125 t/a of calcium carbonate, and 55 t/a of carbon dioxide sequestration. The plant will supply sustainable sulphuric acid for local partner Sabin Metal Corporation's precious metals recycling and refining business.

Good COP, bad COP?

As I write this editorial, the 30th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – aka COP-30 – is taking place in Brazil. It is fair to say that the attempt to try to restrict a large greenhouse gas-driven temperature rise across the planet has become one of the defining issues of our age, and particularly for an energy-intensive industry such as our own, responsible as it is for up to 2% of global carbon and carbon equivalent emissions. The move towards lower carbon intensity production of hydrogen, ammonia and methanol, via carbon dioxide capture and sequestration, gasification of biomass or waste, or electrolysis of water using renewable power, has come to dominate our news coverage, and in this issue we also carry articles on the state of play of both ‘blue’ and ‘green’ ammonia production, as well as technology for ‘cracking’ ammonia back to hydrogen and nitrogen for its potential use as a hydrogen carrier.

Copper output begins at Rio Tinto-backed project

Gunnison has started producing pure copper cathodes at its Johnson Camp Mine (JCM) in southeast Arizona, United States, from a solvent extraction-electrowinning (SX-EW) circuit and using leaching technology from Rio Tinto-owned Nuton. As well as giving Gunnison exclusive rights to deploy the proprietary process on run-of-mine ore, Nuton is a financial partner of the Phoenix-headquartered mine developer which has restarted copper production at past-producing JCM. The company’s next goal is to ramp-up to nameplate plant capacity of 25 million lbs/year (11,300 t/a) of finished copper.

US tariff pause brings relief to fertilizer exporters

President Donald Trump delayed his ‘liberation day” tariffs by three months on 9th April, while simultaneously ramping up levies on China. In this latest twist to the on-off US tariffs saga, the Trump administration’s 90-day pause on additional duties should provide international suppliers to the world’s biggest fertilizer market with some respite – for now. With the exception of China, the US will now cut back its so-called ‘reciprocal tariffs’ to 10% for the duration of a three-month suspension period. The European Union’s tariff is now halved to 10%, for example, with the trade bloc also pausing its trade countermeasures against the US.