Critical Minerals Recovery Solutions
IEX designs, manufactures, and implements the recovery of critical minerals from manufacturing waste streams.
The scarcity and strategic importance of critical minerals including precious and platinum group metals means that recovering them is increasingly important from an operational and supply chain perspective.
These materials are finite, demand is growing, and recovering what is already in circulation is no longer optional.
This is evidenced by the critical mineral strategies in place across the UK, EU, and US.
IEX’s functional materials selectively capture target metal ions from these streams, concentrating them onto a solid phase for subsequent recovery and refining.
The IEX Approach
Traditionally these waste streams may have been disposed of via incineration without recovering the critical minerals.
IEX designs a targeted recovery process around the specific stream to maximise the minerals that can be recovered.
Because IEX manufactures its own functional materials and manages the full recovery pathway through to refining, the client deals with a single point of responsibility from problem identification through to recovered value.
The process follows a consistent model:
Stream Assessment
Understanding what metals are present, at what concentrations, and in what form.
Scavenger selection
Identifying the right functional material for the target ions and process conditions.
Process development
Lab and onsite validation to confirm performance before scale-up.
Deployment
Integrating the solution into the client's process via cartridge, fixed bed, or skid-mounted system.
Recovery and Refining
Spent scavenger returned to IEX and processed through our parent company Mastermelt for metal recovery and financial settlement.
What We Recover
Precious & Platinum Group Metal Recovery
We have expertise in the recovery of platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, and ruthenium from dilute process streams, catalyst residues, and complex effluents.
Applicable across pharmaceutical synthesis, agrochemical production, fine chemical manufacturing, and any process using homogeneous catalysis where precious metals are lost into the product or waste stream over time.
Critical Minerals
Recovery of strategically important minerals classified under national and international critical mineral strategies including transition metals and specialist compounds used in energy transition and advanced manufacturing.
IEX can identify recovery opportunities within existing process streams and design practical solutions at the volumes and economics that make sense.
Solvent Recycling
Many precious metal-bearing streams arrive in significant volumes of organic solvent. Where bulk incineration devalues both, IEX separates the recovery steps capturing the metal onto a solid phase while preserving the solvent for distillation, recovery, and reuse.
Where appropriate, IEX recognises that direct distillation may be the optimal solution, particularly for high-solvent, low-metal concentration streams. In these cases, we can facilitate solvent recovery without unnecessary process complexity, ensuring the most economical route is selected.
This converts what was a single disposal cost into two recoverable outputs.
Outcomes
Partnering with IEX technologies on critical mineral recovery allows organisations to achieve the following outcomes:
Measurable recovery of precious and critical metals from streams previously written off as waste.
Reduced balance sheet exposure through faster, more complete metal recovery.
Lower disposal costs on streams previously classified as hazardous waste.
Closed-loop recovery integrated with recovery and financial settlement via Mastermelt.
Full material accountability and audit-ready reporting throughout.
Talk to the IEX Technical Team
If you handle precious or critical minerals within your process and are not recovering them, IEX can help you understand what is being lost and whether a recovery solution is viable.