Episode 116: The Narnia box for critical minerals

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome to Everybody in the Pool, the podcast where we dive deep into the innovative solutions and the brilliant minds who are tackling the climate crisis head-on. I'm Molly Wood.

This week, one of the biggest bottlenecks to the clean energy transition is critical minerals. Minerals like lithium, nickel, copper, cobalt, and lots of others you have not heard of, are key for batteries and solar panels and transmission lines and heat pump motors and transformers and substations and wind turbines.

But also, when you hear that list, you realize they're necessary for all kinds of electronics or data centers or medical devices or fighter jets or the entire power grid. And so that makes them a national security issue. Governments are scrambling to lock down critical mineral supply chains. China has restricted imports. The United States is pouring billions of dollars into domestic production and partnerships with allies. The problem, of course, isn't that these minerals are unavailable, it's that getting them out of the ground and refining them is expensive, emissions-intensive, and mostly happens in countries other than the United States, sometimes in some very problematic ways.

Plus, you can't just create a whole supply chain out of nothing very quickly. So what if part of the solution isn't mining more, but getting a lot smarter about the stuff we already have? Let's dig in. No pun intended.

Adam Uliana: So my name is Adam Uliana. I'm the co-founder and CEO of ChemFinity Technologies. We're a startup in Brooklyn, New York, that spun out of UC Berkeley just about three years ago, and what we're doing is making critical minerals much more accessible. We have a system and a platform that can recover over 20 different critical minerals, which have been all over the news, and we can do this at a lower cost, much lower footprint, and just in general, a much more accessible way.

The way that we do that at the core is that we have these systems that are very good at separating critical minerals from different types of wastes and mining ores. And really how that looks like is that it's basically like metal selective Brita filters that capture one metal at a time and allow you to recover it at higher purity.

Molly Wood: That's great. T- tell us, if you wouldn't mind, just for... I, I'm certain that everyone listening to this show has been paying attention to the critical minerals conversation, but if you wouldn't mind, just set that stage for us. Like, talk about why this is so important and why this technology's so necessary right now.

Adam Uliana: Absolutely. So maybe to start, uh, just defining what critical minerals are for anyone that's seen it in the news but doesn't quite know what it is, 'cause it can sometimes be a vague kind of word.

Molly Wood: Which is like everyone because they never tell us. [Laughs]

Adam Uliana: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So basically, the way that critical minerals are defined is it's typically a list of, like, 50 or so minerals.

Who defines that list can depend on, like, what government agency or, or who in general, but it's 50 or so different raw materials that oftentimes are some of the most important raw materials for our whole entire economy. They're called critical because they're critical for clean energy technologies, they're critical for national security, they're critical for our economy. And so it's basically a bunch of minerals, like, uh, if you look at a periodic table, uh, maybe, like, a third or a half of the elements, especially in the middle of the periodic table, is a critical mineral. Things like copper that are needed for electrical grids and so forth.

The other side of it is that these minerals, these raw materials are critical because they typically have a vulnerability in the supply chain, and this is one of the biggest reasons why it's very important and why it's all over the news because right now 80% of the US's critical mineral supply, for example, actually comes from foreign sources. We, we don't produce 80% of them here. And so that's a huge issue given that a huge bulk of that comes from places of geopolitical concern like China. So with the recent trade wars, so to speak, uh, you know, that becomes an issue which has been all over the news. It's why the current administration's very interested in it.

But then there's also huge other broader implications. Most clean energy technologies require these critical minerals as raw materials. I'll just give a couple examples. Battery metals are critical minerals, so that's like lithium, cobalt, nickel. Those are critical minerals, and in order to, you know, scale EVs or, or other types of battery technologies or electrifying the grid, you need these critical minerals, but we're at such a deficit of the supply compared to the demand.

Molly Wood: Got it. Okay, so there's, there's critical minerals, and we need them for climate technologies in addition to all these other things, including apparently jets, like fighter jets. Um, but there is also a climate impact on the other side, right, in terms of extraction and retrieval of these in the first place. Like, you're sort of solving for two potential big climate impacts here.

Adam Uliana: Definitely. And it's one of the biggest mission-driven parts of what we're doing at ChemFinity. To kind of give a little bit of flavor into that, first off, the actual way that we get critical minerals as a society typically tends to be pretty, uh, you know, pollution-heavy and a lot of different types of human rights issues.

For example, uh, a lot of estimates say that 7% or up to 7% of GHG emissions directly come just from mining, because it's very hard. You know, you're trying to recover these minerals that are so essential for the whole entire world, but we need to get them from the ground right now. This is why there's a lot more interest, including from ChemFinity, in trying to get them from recycled resources, which I can talk more about.

Molly Wood: Mm-hmm.

Adam Uliana: Um, but then on the flip side, as mentioned, almost every clean energy technology that can really save our planet requires critical minerals. So it's like a chicken and egg. Uh, one of the biggest bottlenecks to scaling clean energy technologies is the fact that we oftentimes don't have the critical minerals that's projected.

There's some projections just to give effect. Some projections say that 6X increase in critical mineral demand will be expected by 2040, especially to hit cr- clean energy technologies and the, the demand needed there.

Molly Wood: Wow. And then just to put a finer point on that, the problem is, is not so much scarcity, but the difficulty and cost of extraction combined with the geopolitical concerns.

Like, you've been, you've been diplomatic about that, but there was a point at which China effectively said to the United States this year, "Sorry, you can't have any of ours."

Adam Uliana: Definitely.

Molly Wood: The end. Yeah.

Adam Uliana: Huge issues and…

Molly Wood: Really big deal.

Adam Uliana: Honestly, there's really not much leverage, uh, from the US's standpoint in that.

Molly Wood: Right. Okay, let's talk about your technology then. So the idea is, uh, y- are you recycling or are you recovering from other sources, or both?

Adam Uliana: Yeah, so where we fit in the value chain, especially as in early days for our main focus right now, we basically go and take different wastes that would otherwise be landfilled, and this can include things like, to give a couple examples, we recover from e-waste, like printed circuit boards or, or the different types of, you know, electronics that are in your phone. Uh, so end of life e-waste. We also do catalytic converters. A, a whole bunch of different types of wastes, wastewaters as well. Those in, in these different types of wastes, very similar to mining, they have some of the valuable critical minerals that our, our society needs, along with a whole bunch of other junk.

Uh, like in the case of a lot of wastewaters, uh, like when you go in the ocean, there's... it's very salty. There's all that other stuff, so the separation is really hard. Where we at ChemFinity sit in, is that we make separation not the bottleneck. So we go and take these different waste streams, and we have a, an efficient process to basically go and separate them into individual components, which is right now a, a, a big difficulty in, in the industry.

Molly Wood: Yeah, I mean, I... We should give you credit. You have described this as a Brita filter, but it's obviously, like, uh, way more than that. [Laughs]

Adam Uliana: It definitely is hard.

Molly Wood: A very, very complicated Brita filter. [Laughs]

Adam Uliana: A very specific Brita filter.

Molly Wood: Yep. Yeah, I mean, some, some listeners will know that my early reporting in this space included, um, a bunch of reporting on lithium extraction from brine, and it, it feels... It seems like... Talk about the technical hurdles that you have to solve in order to do this extraction, and do it economically and at, at quantities that are meaningful.

Adam Uliana: There, there's definitely a lot of different difficulties. Uh, I oftentimes liken it to, like, trying to find many different metal needles in giant waste haystacks. You're trying to recover these, you know, relatively dilute or low concentration types of valuable components from all of the other stuff that looks, at the, at the molecular scale or really at the atomic scale, looks very similar to the metals that you're trying to recover. So actually trying to find those metal needles is, is super hard.

How to get it at high purity, like, how do you have such a high selectivity of your separation that, uh, in the case of lithium extraction, you're recovering pure lithium and not sodium or magnesium, stuff that are almost the exact same, uh, in terms of how it looks. So there's that selectivity piece.

There's the throughput issue, so how do you do this in a way that's very scalable? How do you do this in a way that, you know, can recover this with fast kinetics, not take a long time? We don't, we don't have, you know, centuries to be able to source these minerals. We need them yesterday.

And then there's also different points like stability. A lot of these different waste streams oftentimes have very harsh conditions. Different wastewaters can oftentimes be acidic. A lot of things degrade in those conditions, so how do you have technology that can withstand the harsh stuff? So whole bunch of these technical hurdles, and these are kind of what drives us forward at ChemFinity to solve.

Molly Wood: W- Uh, how are, how do you? How, I, so there's, so, you know, without giving... I'm not asking for your trade secrets necessarily, but what, what is the technology unlock that has... 'Cause you could, you could imagine someone hearing what you're saying and going like, "Is it worth it? Is it, is it even economically viable to do all of that? And get enough of the stuff that you need.” So what is the unlock that answered both of those questions for you as a company?

Adam Uliana: Yeah, that's the beauty of the systems that we're, that we've been scaling up. Uh, really how it works is that, so we have a series of these, you know, metal selective Brita filters, as I described. But really, the unlock and the innovation of what we're developing at ChemFinity are the filter materials themselves.

Let's just take one Brita filter, zoom into the, the actual filter material. So if you look at a Brita filter, it's like the black stuff, the activated carbon inside of the Brita filter. Those types of sorbents, as they're called, or, or different materials are, are oftentimes not very selective. In a Brita filter, for example, you try to basically... Like a Brita filter will remove a bunch of different organic pollutants and stuff like that to make it safe, but it won't really separate one individual pollutant.

Here, what we're doing in order to get high purity metals per Brita filter, when you zoom into that one material, it's really the, this material breakthrough that we've developed. What- It's almost like a nano sponge. So we're talking about being able to tune these, a bunch of these pores within that filter material that we have. When you zoom into the nanometer scale, like we're talking like 10 times the size, or like, you know, 10 times the size of some atoms, or in other words like 10,000 times smaller or, or more than the width of a human hair. We can tune these nano sponge materials, each of these pores, like building with atomic-scale Legos.

Based off of different chemical building blocks you use, you can create these perfect more or less cages that are the pores themselves, that are super specific in terms of the size, shape, chemistry, all that stuff for just one, you know, atom at a time, like one molecule. So you can separate something like platinum from palladium or, uh, you know, copper from cobalt and stuff like that.

Molly Wood: Okay, so what is the background of the company? You spun out from Cal. Like, at what point were you working on this nanoscale process and then thinking, "Okay, there's real commercial application here"?

Adam Uliana: Yeah, I guess a little bit of backstory. So the work that we're doing at ChemFinity is based off of, largely based off of the PhD work of my co-founder, Ever Velasquez, and I during our PhDs. We were in a, in one of the leading material chemistry labs at Berkeley, uh, Jeff Long's group. He was a really great PI to work on this whole process, being able to tune these materials at the, at the nanoscale, similar to ways that just won a Nobel Prize in chemistry this year, actually.

So we were working on these different systems. Uh, I originally actually wanted to become a professor rather than do a startup. And really, it was throughout the whole, the whole PhD journey, which started in 2017, went to 2022, that we started getting a lot more encouragement, kind of, you know, day by day and through a lot of customer discovery that we did, really seeing potential for huge impact on the technology.

And so it was really, the decision to go and start ChemFinity was honestly largely impact-driven, really the case of wanting to make impact. Um, and so the kind of time that we decided to do it was after getting a lot of that encouragement. It wasn't actually until, like, our last year at Berkeley that we decided to go, quote-unquote, "all in" and do ChemFinity, and it was really about just making that impact, both on an environmental standpoint and all these other issues that I just mentioned for critical minerals.

Molly Wood: So who are your… I'm gonna try to do this one question at a time, even though they're a little bit related. Like, who are your customers and what waste streams do you work with, and are those sometimes the same?

Adam Uliana: So it oftentimes are different customers themselves, but in very similar types of settings. We right now work with a lot of different recyclers, where we take their wastes, especially wastes that are really hard to process. Sometimes those recyclers are large industrials who have, like, an industrial wastewater or an industrial waste that right now is, is really hard to process, especially economically. We try to get some of the really hard stuff, 'cause that's where our systems oftentimes are, are best at.

Um, so we work with those recyclers and those, quote-unquote, like, feedstock providers. We basically act like a black box where that waste, say like a shredded circuit board or a wastewater, goes into our process, we act like a black box, where we spit out pure metal. So we basically do those separations, create pure metal that could be sold to then to, back to the customer, so resent to that customer, uh, or to a new one, like a, a metal trader, for example. And so we have a few projects kind of doing that.

Molly Wood: Got it. So sometimes the feedstock provider can also be the customer for the end product, but not always.

Adam Uliana: Right. And it depends if they're... 'Cause there are some standalone recyclers, for example. Like, scrapyards don't typically go and recreate, um, I don't know, a new car.

Molly Wood: Right. Right.

Adam Uliana: But a car maker who has waste or, like, a data center that has, you know, e-waste might want to have e-waste, the same... Or, sorry, the same electronics be brought back into their facility.

Molly Wood: Got it. Yeah, I mean, uh, break this down for us, I guess, in terms of, like, how you think about your, your TAM. Like, who's the... Who is the addressable market for both the process and then the end product?

Adam Uliana: Yeah. Ultimately, one of the nice things about what we're designing for is that our system looks very similar across all of the different, you know, 20-plus critical minerals that we're addressing and across, like, all these different feedstocks.

So in terms of the addressable market, we really envision expanding into mining. It's actually one of the earliest markets that we, that we had considered going all in on. Um, but really hitting all of…

Molly Wood: Wait, what does that mean, expanding it? Like, literally working with mines?

Adam Uliana: Right. Right. For different processing challenges. So our systems can be used in mining ores, it can be used in different waste sources. And so really what we're trying to do is simplify the ways that critical minerals are refined. And to us, it, it... The system doesn't really care about what goes in so much as, uh... Like, it's not, it, it's, it's not specific to just one type of feedstock. And so anyone that basically has a source that has a critical mineral that you wanna go and process is really who we wanna target.

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Time for a quick break. When we come back, some more details on this magical sounding process, and Adam assures me he is most definitely not stealing catalytic converters. You'll see.

Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool. We're talking with Adam Uliana of ChemFinity.

Molly Wood: I mean, I had to like... Okay, I know you have described it as a black box, but it's just, but I sort of, I need us to be a little more specific here 'cause it sounds like a magic box, really. It's like Narnia. Like, you could put in a shredded processor or, like, a catalytic converter or water or sludge that's, you know, produced from a mine. Like, a- all, all of that? Like, what are we talking here?

Adam Uliana: Yeah. I guess to break it down a little bit, so of course, like, which feedstock is economic in, in general to process, not even just for ChemFinity, is always a question.

Molly Wood: Right.

Adam Uliana: So is what's worth it depends on, on what you're processing. But the way that our system works is that you take a waste, you liquidize it, so you, you convert it to a liquid. Or if the waste already starts as a liquid, like a wastewater, then, then you don't obviously need to do that. And then you go and…

Molly Wood: How do you, how do you convert, like a... Let's just use a catalytic converter as an example 'cause I live in Oakland and those get stolen all the time.

Adam Uliana: Yeah.

Molly Wood: So I can conceptualize that doohickey. How do you-

Adam Uliana: Which we are not doing. We're not stealing those. I, I, I promise. [Laughs]

Molly Wood: I mean, what you're doing is why people are stealing them, so, like, you know, they got valuable stuff in them. I get it. Um, how do you convert that to a liquid?

Adam Uliana: Yeah, definitely important to work with those recyclers that, that actually have standardized processes that don't do stolen stuff. But anyway, how we convert it to a liquid…

Molly Wood: I know, I'm sorry. I introduced a whole other tangent here. [Laughs]

Molly Wood: Yep. However. [Laughs]

Adam Uliana: Yep, however, however, how we do it…

Molly Wood: You have one of 'em.

Adam Uliana: Yeah. Say that we have a catalytic converter, a non-stolen catalytic converter.

Molly Wood: Mm-hmm. Totally.

Adam Uliana: Um, typically we get this in, like, a, or we can do it ourselves in, like, a ground-up state. So think of it like a powder, uh, basically like a pulverized form.

Molly Wood: Okay. So you pulverize it in some way.

Adam Uliana: Right. So whether we do or they do, yep.

Molly Wood: Okay.

Adam Uliana: Uh, so then that goes into, like, more or less like a giant pot, like a giant react- like a reactor or a, or a mixer where we put in different types of, um, either chemicals or, like, reagents or different stu- There's a whole... It depend- This depends on, like, what you're actually trying to dissolve, but you'll use different components to... That, like, a solvent for example, it can be. Uh, basically kind of like when you mix it, like, uh, it'll, it'll cause the metals in the, in the catalytic converter to dissolve into that pot.

Molly Wood: Okay.

Adam Uliana: Similar to, like, when you're, you know, dissolving sugar in a glass of, I don't know, water.

Molly Wood: Right. But it might be, like, with sulfuric acid instead of warm water kinda thing?

Adam Uliana: Yeah, but depend... Right. Right, right.

Molly Wood: Depends on the- But depending, right. Yeah.

Adam Uliana: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. So it can be, yeah, stuff like an acid or a base or a solvent, st- something more benign.

But anyway, uh, so we, we convert it to that liquid, and then that liquid gets sent into each of the Brita filters. So that liquid gets pumped into, like, Brita filter one, which recovers metal one. Then it goes into Brita filter two, which recovers metal two, like copper.

Molly Wood: Got it.

Adam Uliana: Uh, and so forth. And one of the big things to note, which is why we're excited about this tech, is that the existing ways to do this processing, oftentimes are very complex, oftentimes use smelting. This is really high temperature types of processes that have been, you know, around thousands of years, alongside a bunch of other stuff. So it can oftentimes be, like, dozens of steps to separate metals.

Molly Wood: Right.

Adam Uliana: Whereas for us it's like a core column set.

Molly Wood: Got it. Okay. And so the innovation is at that filtering end, not the pre-processing end. Like, that's all fairly understood in terms of grinding things into a powder and then separating or dissolving further.

Adam Uliana: That's definitely... Right. Right. That's definitely the core ChemFinity innovation, and there's, there's a lot of really interesting startups making new ways to, uh, what- what's called leaching the metals, so, like, doing the dissolving step.

Molly Wood: Yeah.

Adam Uliana: And so what we're trying to develop is basically those separators that are agnostic to what type of liquid everything's dissolved in.

Molly Wood: Got it. Okay. So that's the, that's the, like, cor- like you said, the core innovation and the repeatable part, is that sort of... It do- 'Cause it was sort of... It's confusing to try to figure out how, like, it doesn't matter what goes in, but I see what you're saying.  If there's, like, this understood pre-processing step, the important thing for you is to just get to this liquid state, and then you... Then the magic happens.

Adam Uliana: Right. Right. Yeah. And then of course, you know, there's some things, like we have to make sure that it works well, that if we need to do slight modifications and so forth depending on what the liquid is, but basically the process works the same on our end.

Molly Wood: Yep. So then as you scale, and I wanna, uh, maybe now is a good point to say, where are you now in the process? Like, you are still relatively early it sounds like, so I don't wanna jump ahead too far.

Adam Uliana: Yeah. So there's two parts of it. There's how we make our material, like those special filters, like the magic materials that you kind of referred to or that we sometimes refer to.

Um, and then there's the actual…

Molly Wood; The Narnia. [Laughs]

Adam Uliana: The, the Narnia. How we, how we make Narnia. [Laughs] Hopefully.

Um, and then there's the side of the processing itself. So on the processing, we're basically creating some of our first pilots right now. Um, really building those up, trying to separate large- or process larger and larger amounts of these wastes.

We've already validated various types of wastes in our labs, showing that the systems work, you know, at lab scale or at large lab scale. We're really trying to scale that up. The actual, uh, manufacturing of our, you know, the Narnia materials, that's something that we've done a lot of de-risking on. One of the... These are, these are advanced materials. That's what they'll be called in, like, in, in the industry.

Molly Wood: Right.

Adam Uliana: These are advanced materials, very advanced, very, you know, novel. One of the classic places, probably the most common place where advanced materials go to die in the marketplace, is that they, they oftentimes can't be scaled up, both in terms of reproducibility and in terms of cost.

Molly Wood: Mm-hmm.

Adam Uliana: So that's something that we addressed head-on. We've done pilot manufacturing, so that's kind of where we're at at, at that side.

Molly Wood: Got it. So yeah, I mean, I, I don't want... Again, don't undersell yourself. Like, you have invented something entirely new, and then you have to figure out how to produce that in bulk, and, and I assume then create a process that isn't... It, you know, like, it sounds like the important thing you've done is create a process that is not bespoke every time.

Adam Uliana: Right.

Molly Wood: And then how significant is the footprint of the actual processing facility.

Adam Uliana: Yeah. It's actually one of our greatest value propositions based on how we've been designing it. And, uh, yeah, so based on how we've been designing it, all of our calculations suggest that if we're able to successfully scale as, as we've been designing it, then we would potentially... 

We would have the potential to lower, you know, footprint in terms of, like, emissions, energy use, water footprint by over 99% compared to how it's done today.

And really, the way, the reason for that, again, if we're able to do this at scale, which, you know, it's been looking good at the next scales, is because we require much fewer steps for processing.

So, as I mentioned, incumbent processes oftentimes require many steps, sometimes dozens of steps, where we have basically one core separation step. Um, incumbent processes also oper-  operate at high temperatures oftentimes, where we're at essentially room temperature. And we also require very simple equipment, like those Brita filter housing.

And so the size of the system is also much smaller.

Molly Wood: Okay. That's, and that's the other thing I was wondering is what is the size of... Like, do people need to do... Does a recycler need to build a new building, or is it, like, a modular-

Adam Uliana: Very, yeah.

Molly Wood: You know, it's, it's a machine that they just roll in?

Adam Uliana: Mm-hmm. Exactly.

So super modular equipment. Um, and that's not just a ChemFinity process, but, um, sorbent technologies in general. I mean, think of the Brita filter. You can have one in your house, or you can have, like, water treatment plants basically have a very large Brita filter in their... You know, it's not by Brita, right. But I think you get the point. [Laughs]

Molly Wood: I do, totally. So would you... So that's what I mean. Is it a drop-in? Like, could you replace the existing filter, let's, you know, for simplifying purposes, with yours? Or will they have to do, you know, CapEx, like, infrastructure?

Adam Uliana: Yeah. What we've been designing for has been trying to do drop-in replacements.

However, uh, the wastes and the feedstocks that we've been focused on more so in early days have especially been trying to focus on wastes that oftentimes are landfilled or, or don't really have a great solution. And so we're always excited to kind of partner with and connect with different recyclers or, or mines or, or other industrials that have these waste waters or different wastes that have valuable stuff in it, but because it's too complex or, or whatever the reason be, uh, they don't separate it.

Molly Wood: Right.

Adam Uliana: And so that's kind of what we're doing right now, rather than just trying to re- replace all infrastructure at, like, a traditional refiner. Yeah. But that is something that, that we're very interested in.

Molly Wood: And then down the road, we're just gonna go ahead and assume you will have scaled. What, what does it look like in terms of quantity? Like, how, how much of the critical mineral supply do you think you could start to recover or, you know, is it, is it additive? Like, what does it, what does it start to look like in terms of the actual output?

Adam Uliana: Yeah. Really what we, what we're... Like, in a best case scenario of what we kind of envision and, and are aiming for, we're, we're really trying to create these systems that can simplify the ways that essentially all critical minerals are processed.

Obviously, there can be some that sorbent technologies in general just don't really make as much sense for, but in general, we, we see this as systems that could be applied throughout, again, like, all of mining, um, all of recycling, really being able to pinpoint and, and remove and, and create high purity elements or, or critical minerals from a whole variety of different stuff.

So we really envision being able to tap into all of these different industrials where critical minerals today are processed and produced. So really spanning the whole gamut, um, we're talking about things like in mining, mine tailings, the waste there. Trying to tap into that, um, mining ores as well.

Molly Wood: Yeah. Tell me, tell me... I'm just cur- out of curiosity, like, tell me more about how it would work in a mining environment. Is it sort of like, like there might be a gold mine, I visited a gold mine in Nevada, and it has a bunch of tailings, and you're saying there could be, there's a, a whole bunch of other valuable resource in there that you could then filter for and recover?

Adam Uliana: Yeah. In a case like tailings where we would be a part of that separation, and of course, there's other, there's the, a whole entire value stream of, of processing. And so where we would fit in to, let's just take a, a tailings example, um, there's a lot of different ways that you can look at this, but one example, like, one prime example is that mining companies and different startups, there's a lot of interest in trying to reclaim those tailings, where a lot of the approaches are you take that tailing, you leach it down.

And right now, like, a lot of startups that we've talked to, for example, or mining companies, um, are focused on creating new ways to leach that down in a cost-effective manner or, or, you know, convert it to that liquid. Where we would then sit is that we bring in, like, a shipping container of our, of our Brita filter, the, the columns, the separators. And that waste that's... or the tailing that's, that's leached and liquidized goes and gets sent through our columns, so we basically do all of the polishing…

Molly Wood: Got it.

Adam Uliana: To be able to create the, the final metals.

Molly Wood: Amazing. Okay. Um, what do you need in order to be successful? Like, what is the, you know, the two-year, five-year, 10-year tailwinds for you?

Adam Uliana: Yeah. I think there's a lot of stuff that's pretty classic among any type of startup. Like, you need funds, you need great people. You need great partners. That, you know, that's not, that's definitely not only specific to ChemFinity, but definitely is needed for us, too. So there's the fact of having to make sure that we can scale up efficiently, and that becomes a whole entire valley of death, of course, throughout all of startup land, where we need to be able to do this in a cost-effective manner.

Again, because of the modularity and relative simplicity of our systems, the CapEx ends up being a lot lower than what a lot of systems are if we're able to, again, successfully do this at scale. But it's still not nothing, and you still... You don't wanna just use investor money, for example. So really being able to tap into government grants, which have been a huge unlock to a lot of startups in the US a- and elsewhere in order to scale.

So being able to get that diverse capital stack to be able to successfully scale is one. Again, getting really, really great talent. Um, everyone's in startup world is, you know, cr- including us, is creating stuff for the first time. How do you get people that really wanna do that and find that really exciting?

That's something that we'll need to do, of course. And then also making sure that, you know, we're able to secure a lot of feedstocks. We're able to have those off-takers of the metals in a way that's not super cumbersome. One of the challenges in, in recycling and secondary metal production is, of course, trying to get feedstock from oftentimes dispersed places.

So how do you get it... Like in e-waste, like it, like for e-waste, you know, there's a lot of different collection facilities. How do you go and get very high volumes of that waste? These are types of stuff that we'll need to solve and have started to.

Molly Wood: As the, the business model evolves and, and the plan goes on, i- is it your goal to sort of be in the business of selling metals and selling critical min- you know, like, what does that start to look like in terms of you as a business staying on track and doing the things that you're good at and not being like, "Now I'm a lithium dealer"?

Adam Uliana: Yeah. No, it's a really good question. That is totally dependent on what vertical or, like, what, you know... I've been saying feedstock. Basically, what feedstock and what market we're in. And, and so I'll give a couple examples. For ones like, like the mi- the mine tailing waste, like in mine tailings, it doesn't make sense for us to go and own, like, every part of that value chain. There it would be more of a drop-in replacement, almost like a, like, a, an equipment seller…

Molly Wood: Yeah.

Adam Uliana: Rather than... And, you know, the mines usually handle the metal sales. So that's a case of that.

In a case of some of the recycling technologies, especially where some of our main focus right now is recovering precious metals, these are very high-value metals like gold and platinum, that's a case where it's a commodities market. It's, it's actually not, like, super complicated to go and find a buyer of that, like a metal trader, for example. And so that's a case where that can make sense for us to, like, go and own that part, 'cause it's not like we're creating a whole value chain.

Molly Wood: Got it. Then you might just have, like, a stable of existing metal trader customers and…

Adam Uliana: Exactly.

Molly Wood: Yeah.

Adam Uliana: Right.

Molly Wood: Okay.

Adam Uliana: So it depends on, on where the market is and essentially how complicated it would be.

Molly Wood: It's, it's sort of like it can be a blessing and a curse when you can work with almost anything and sell to almost anybody. You're just like "Oh, do we have to pick a lane?"

Adam Uliana: Definitely. And that's something that, yeah, I wanted to make sure to temp- It's hard 'cause when you talk about it in the high level, um, you know, it's... it... There's, of course, when you break it down, like, complexities with certain wastes or certain feedstocks or certain mines, that doesn't make it, like, quite as easy.

Molly Wood: Right.

Adam Uliana: Like, it can still be applicable, but yeah, hard to... It doesn't make sense to break it down for all 20.

Molly Wood: It has to be, like, a little bit bespoke. Like baby, baby bespoke.

Adam Uliana: Baby bespoke. Yeah.

Molly Wood: All right. Adam Uliana is the co-founder and CEO of ChemFinity. Keep an eye out, everybody. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Adam Uliana: Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

Molly Wood Voice-Over: That's it for this episode of Everybody In The Pool. Thank you so much for listening.

That is also it for the year 2025 and season three of our little podcast. It has been an absolute joy and truly a spot of optimism for me every single week. I am so grateful to everyone who was a guest this year and made the show that much better and more impactful.

And I am excited to keep telling these stories in 2026 because no matter what, my friends, I continue to believe with my whole heart that together we can get this done. See you next year.