• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

Microsoft Makes Strategic Investment in Cyclic Materials to Accelerate Climate Tech Innovation

TheLostSwede

News Editor
Joined
Nov 11, 2004
Messages
16,726 (2.33/day)
Location
Sweden
System Name Overlord Mk MLI
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Motherboard Gigabyte X670E Aorus Master
Cooling Noctua NH-D15 SE with offsets
Memory 32GB Team T-Create Expert DDR5 6000 MHz @ CL30-34-34-68
Video Card(s) Gainward GeForce RTX 4080 Phantom GS
Storage 1TB Solidigm P44 Pro, 2 TB Corsair MP600 Pro, 2TB Kingston KC3000
Display(s) Acer XV272K LVbmiipruzx 4K@160Hz
Case Fractal Design Torrent Compact
Audio Device(s) Corsair Virtuoso SE
Power Supply be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 850 W
Mouse Logitech G502 Lightspeed
Keyboard Corsair K70 Max
Software Windows 10 Pro
Benchmark Scores https://valid.x86.fr/yfsd9w
Cyclic Materials, an advanced metals recycling company building a circular supply chain for rare earth elements and other critical metals, today announced it has received an equity investment from Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund, an initiative dedicated to accelerating technology development and deployment of new climate innovations. This investment is representative of Microsoft's commitment to a circular economy and interest in hard drive rare earth element recycling.

Over the past two years, Cyclic has developed a patent-pending technology, CC360, to specifically address the challenge of recovering rare earths contained in end-of-life hard drives. While hard drives are typically sent to an IT asset disposal (ITAD) company at the end of life, this disposal process is designed for data destruction, followed by shredding of drives for the recovery of other metals such as gold and silver. The rare earths contained are currently not recovered. With the CC360, ITAD companies can separate a portion of hard drives for rare earth recovery, while retaining the rest of the hard drives for their traditional process. These separated magnets can then be processed by Cyclic Materials' processing technologies, unlocking an additional value stream from hard drive disposal.




"Microsoft is working to achieve zero waste across our direct operations, products, and packaging by 2030. This means adopting a circular economy approach," said Brandon Middaugh, Senior Director, Climate Innovation Fund, Microsoft. "As demand for rare earth elements continues to grow in importance, we're excited to support the creation of a sustainable supply of these materials with this investment."

Established in 2021, Cyclic Materials is an industry leader developing technologies that are capable of economically, sustainably and domestically transforming end-of-life (EOL) products into valuable raw materials. The recycling of rare earths delivers significant environmental benefits in comparison to mining processes, including a reduced carbon footprint and water usage. Cyclic Materials recently opened its Kingston-based "Hub100" plant, deploying its proprietary hydrometallurgical technology, REEPure and helping fulfill the ever-increasing demand for domestic sources of mixed rare earth oxide (MREO) in North America.

"We have been working with Cyclic over the past few months to trial the use of the CC360 TM in our operations. We have seen tremendous performance improvements through the development and achieved throughput of one hard drive per second," said Sean Magann, chief commercial officer at Sims Lifecycle Services (SLS). "This solution enables us to drive further value out of disposed hard drives, by reclaiming the critical rare earths, while maintaining the data security of the hard drives being disposed. An additional benefit is the reduction of magnets clogging our shredders. We look forward to deploying this technology across our operations."

"We're thrilled by this endorsement from Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund as a key strategic investor who is like minded in creating a circular supply chain for rare earth elements contained in hard drives used in their data center operations," said Ahmad Ghahreman, co-founder and CEO of Cyclic Materials. "This support enables us to accelerate the deployment of our commercial facilities, which is a critical step in growing the domestic supply of rare earths in North America that support the energy transition. Additionally, we value the input that SLS has provided, helping us to validate our new CC360 technology that we believe will prove invaluable to large data center operators such as Microsoft as they work towards their circularity and sustainability goals."

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source
 
Joined
Sep 4, 2013
Messages
76 (0.02/day)
System Name JUV3
Processor Intel Core i5 9400F
Motherboard EVGA Z370 Classified K
Cooling NoFan CR-95C Copper
Memory Kingston HyperX Fury DDR4
Video Card(s) ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2070
Storage WD_Black SN750
Display(s) AOC AGON AG273QX
Case Thermaltake Core P3 TG
Audio Device(s) Topping DX3 Pro+ with Beyerdynamic Amiron Home
Power Supply Seasonic Platinum Fanless
Mouse Logitech G Pro X Ultralight
Keyboard Durgod Taurus K320 with Cherry Silent Red switches
I like the idea of recycling metals used in electronics, but it seems like a terrible idea to have a singular focus on hard disk drives when the amount of them being produced is plummeting.
 
Joined
Dec 14, 2018
Messages
126 (0.06/day)
Location
Finland
System Name No name, yet..
Processor AMD 1800X at stock settings.
Motherboard AsRock X370 itx/ac, /diy vrm heatsink.
Cooling Alphacool Eisbaer 240LT.
Memory 2 x 8gb G.Skill Flare 3200/CL14.
Video Card(s) Gigabyte RTX 2060 oc rev2.
Storage Samsung 960 Evo 500GB m.2, Crucial MX500 2TB sata.
Display(s) HP ZR24W.
Case DIY ITX.
Power Supply Be Quiet 500W sfx-l
Software Win10 home, Ubuntu linux.
MS made millions PC's obsolete starting some time in next year. Like my Zen1 rig or my mom's laptop. Only thing missing in those is TPM2.

Hypocrisy at its best. Zero waste. Great.

My next rig may be dualboot, win11 only for the apps that don't work under Linux. After that, only Linux.

Byebye MS.
 
Top