Technology startup Supra Elemental Recovery announced Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Defense Logistics Agency has awarded it a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to advance recovery of scandium. The company didn’t disclose the amount of the award.
The contract, it said, will bolster Supra’s recovery of rare earth elements from North American industrial byproducts.
Spun out of the University of Texas at Austin, Supra recovers and refines critical minerals using peer-reviewed separation technologies at mining and industrial site. Supra’s proprietary platform utilizes advanced chemical separation technology to selectively recover target elements from industrial feedstocks.
Under the SBIR, Supra will evaluate the feasibility of applying its separation platform to relevant feedstocks in support of potential future scalability.
Scandium is a key mineral utilized in advanced aerospace, energy, and commercial technologies. There is currently no commercial scandium mining or production in the United States, and the country relies entirely on imports from foreign markets.
The research effort aims to evaluate novel separation and processing technologies to support domestic supply chain diversity.
“The U.S. has scandium resources onshore,” Supra CEO Katie Durham said in a news release. “Our technology is built to recover this scandium at high purity and at scale to meet domestic demand.”
