A cleaner path to rare earth metals

Tomás Villalón Jr. ’14 was raised in San Antonio, Texas, but vividly remembers smog hanging over the city his family came from—Monterrey, Mexico, a steel manufacturing and metal fabrication hub. Even as a child, he realized it was problematic to breathe that air. 

“I’m motivated because I’ve seen what metal-making does,” says Villalón, who majored in materials science and engineering. He started thinking about sustainable metallurgy senior year while working at Boston Metal, an MIT spinoff focused on decarbonizing steelmaking. In 2019 he cofounded Phoenix Tailings, which has developed an efficient process for extracting rare earth metals from mining waste.

“The mining ecosystem by itself makes over several billion tons of waste,” says Villalón, who serves as chief technology officer. (Others on the founding team are Michelle Chao ’17, Nick Myers, and Anthony Balladon.) “We have to get rid of this pollution.”

The company asserts that its proprietary electrochemical technique for processing rare earths generates no toxins and is carbon-free when fueled by renewables. 

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