Last year, the U.S. designated magnesium as a critical mineral, one of the “electric 18” that are critical for the energy transition. The metal is used in a range of electronics, and it weighs less than aluminum, making it an attractive alternative for automakers.
But like with so many other minerals, China has grown to dominate the market. It’s not because magnesium is scarce — in fact, it’s the eighth most abundant mineral in the Earth’s crust, and it’s the third most abundant dissolved mineral in the world’s oceans. But in the U.S., at least, only one company produces virgin metal, everything else is either imported or recycled from scrap.
“The name of the game really is, can you compete with the 90% production that’s coming out of China today?” said Howard Yuh, co-founder and CEO of Tidal Metals.
Yuh is betting that his startup can. The company, previously known as GreenBlu, had been working on desalination technology when it realized there was more value in the minerals that were left behind.
“At that time, the industry around magnesium was already sort of in shambles in the United States,” he said. Sensing opportunity, in late 2023 the company pivoted to magnesium production and rebranded.
The lightweight metal has the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions from transportation if it can be produced with minimal pollution. Motorsports fans will note that magnesium is common in race cars, particularly in the wheels, where every pound lost improves acceleration and handling. In passenger vehicles, broader use of magnesium would improve fuel economy, reducing the carbon footprint of fossil fuel vehicles and extending the range of electric vehicles. Some battery companies have begun to explore using the metal to improve energy density.
Magnesium today is largely produced in two ways: by cooking the mineral dolomite and by evaporating salt water, usually in giant open-air ponds, and processing what remains. The former is widely used in China and dominates production; it’s also incredibly polluting, especially when coal is the heat source.
Tidal Metals follows the latter, the evaporative approach, but it eschews the ponds. In its place, it uses what’s known as a temperature-swing vapor pump. Basically, the company uses a material that readily absorbs moisture to evaporate seawater or brines leftover from desalination. The material is similar to the silica gel packets you find tucked in things made overseas, and it sits inside a box that’s exposed to seawater. When the material becomes saturated, Tidal Metals closes the box and raises the temperature, releasing the water.
Meanwhile, another material-filled box opens to continue evaporating the seawater. Once that box is saturated, Tidal Metals uses heat pumps to move the heat from the first box, which is now drier, to the second, saturated box. Apart from the initial heat needed to warm the first box, Yuh said the process is very efficient. “We’ve basically recycled about 97% of the energy.”
In the end, the startup will have evaporated a metric ton of seawater to produce about 4 kilograms of the magnesium salt.
Once the water is evaporated, some H2O molecules are still bound to the magnesium chloride. Those need to go, too. Yuh wouldn’t disclose details, but he said the company has tweaked an existing process to make it easier.
Tidal Metals is working on a pilot plant that can produce 200 tons per year. Funding for the project comes from a recent $8.5 million seed round led by DCVC with participation from Bidra Innovation Ventures and First Spark Ventures. Once the engineering on that plant is sorted, Yuh said the startup is aiming for a larger-scale facility that can produce 10,000 tons per year, possibly as early as 2026.
Altogether, Tidal Metals’ process promises to be significantly less polluting than what’s done in China, particularly if renewable electricity is used to power the heat pumps. Plus, because the company can use seawater and briny waste from desalination plants, the resource is nearly unlimited, unlike magnesium that comes from mined dolomite.
“The one desalination plant in San Diego pumps in 100 million gallons of seawater a day. That’s enough to supply all of the U.S. with magnesium — 180,000 tons a year,” Yuh said. “Today, it’s all going to waste.”
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Industrial heat, which is used by companies as diverse as breweries and food processors to chemical manufacturers and paper mills, is one of the last bastions of fossil fuels. After all, it’s pretty hard to beat a flame when you need to heat something up.
But recently, a slew of startups have started exploring ways to make heat using electricity. Some, like Rondo, Antora, and Fourth Power, rely on cheap wind and solar to heat specialized bricks to thousands of degrees, storing the thermal energy for later use. Others, like Skyven Technologies, have developed industrial-scale heat pumps that use a series of compressors to achieve the desired temperature.
Heat pumps are particularly suited to supplying the not-quite-searing heat used by food and beverage manufacturers. New Belgium Brewing, for example, agreed last year to install a 650-kilowatt heat pump boiler from AtmosZero at its Colorado headquarters.
That’s exactly the sort of installation targeted by Karman Industries, a heat pump startup which until now had operated in stealth. To replace industrial boilers, the company draws inspiration from SpaceX’s rockets, co-founder and CEO David Tearse told TechCrunch.
“On the technology side, what we’re building is much more akin to a Raptor engine in terms of speed, pressure, and temperature,” he said.
Like other heat pumps, Karman uses compressors to transfer heat. But unlike the refrigerator in your kitchen, which uses a more prosaic compressor, Karman will use turbomachinery to get the job done.
Turbomachinery, which can spin at incredible speeds, is widely used in rockets to pump fuel. Turbomachinery isn’t yet common in heat pumps, though another startup, Evari, is developing one for use in homes and electric vehicles.
Inside a heat pump, the turbomachinery’s speed helps minimize the device’s footprint, moving the same amount of heat as typical compressors, but in a smaller package. Karman’s largest compressor will fit in a frame up to eight feet long and six feet in diameter. Smaller models will be about four to five feet long and two to three feet in diameter. None of them will require oil, a necessity for most other heat pumps, which simplifies the design and maintenance.
Heat pumps can typically only “lift” the temperature so much. So to get to the sorts of temperatures required by industrial users, even those needing only low-grade heat — up to 150 degrees Celsius — heat pump manufacturers generally string a series of compressors together, each lifting the heat a portion of the total. Each additional compressor adds cost and complexity.
“Compared to other systems that are out there, to do the same amount of lift that would take them about five or six stages, we can do in one or two,” Tearse said.
Karman already has some experience in industrial heat courtesy of co-founder and CTO Chiranjeev (CJ) Kalra, who was formerly head of technology at Antora and vice president of power generation at Heliogen. Tearse previously worked at aviation startup Skyryse and Riot Ventures, where Karman was incubated. Riot led a $4 million pre-seed investment in Karman with participation from Space VC, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.
Though it’s still early for the company, Tearse said that he’s confident that the company’s first model, Thermal01, will be cost competitive with natural gas in certain regions and for certain processes. He anticipates a pilot will be ready to install on a customer site in the first half of 2026.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch