Tomás Villalón Jr. '14 grew up in San Antonio, Texas, but remembers the smog hanging over Monterrey, Mexico, the steel manufacturing and metal fabrication hub his family came from. Even as a child, he understood that breathing that air was a problem. "I'm motivated because I've seen what metal-making does," says Villalón, who majored in materials science and engineering at MIT.
He began thinking about sustainable metallurgy in his senior year while working at Boston Metal, an MIT spinoff focused on decarbonizing steelmaking. In 2019 he cofounded Phoenix Tailings, a company that has developed an efficient process for extracting rare earth metals from mining waste. Villalón, who serves as chief technology officer, points to the scale of the problem. "The mining ecosystem by itself makes over several billion tons of waste," he says. "We have to get rid of this pollution." Other members of the founding team include Michelle Chao '17, Nick Myers, and Anthony Balladon.
The company asserts that its proprietary electrochemical technique for processing rare earths generates no toxins and is carbon-free when powered by renewables. The approach aims to recover valuable metals while reducing the environmental footprint of the mining sector.
The startup's work reflects a broader push to make the materials supply chain for clean technologies less polluting. Rare earth elements are essential to many modern devices and energy systems, so cleaner extraction methods could have wide-reaching effects if they can be scaled.
Source: MIT Technology Review · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing