One flash is all it takes.
That’s how James Tour believes America can tackle China’s rare earth dominance.
All he needs is discarded electronics—of which the United States has mountains. And from these scraps, the Rice University chemist and nanotechnologist has pioneered a way to quickly extract rare earth metals.
“We can pull out one metal and then the next,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s really that simple.”
Tour’s solution is flash Joule heating: rapidly heating up the materials to thousands of degrees to vaporize the metals. Mixed with chlorine gas, the vapors turn into chlorides that emerge at different temperatures….