Early-stage Orca to squeeze ore from seaweed

Marine cultivator Blue Evolution launched Orca Minerals last week in a bid to harvest scandium, palladium and rare earths from seaweed farms.

Orca, located in San Jose, Calif., is partnering with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to test biomass strains for how well they absorb minerals from seawater. Additionally, Orca is to work with an unidentified European metallurgy partner on secondary refining, CEO Beau Perry told The Northern Miner.

“A drop of seawater has everything on the periodic table in some quantity in it,” Perry said. “We know seaweeds take up a lot of arsenic, lead and cadmium … so we know that they’re hyper accumulators.”

U.S. policy makers are racing to secure domestic critical-mineral supply. Conventional refineries often face strong local resistance over acid leach and solvent use.

While Perry argues an “algal ore” feedstock could, in fact, cut the physical and toxic footprint of downstream plants, no regulator has yet approved a farm-to-refinery flowsheet.

Seaweed farms don’t have a published mass balance or clear purity targets. This means they can’t provide the measured grades that miners show under NI 43-101 standards in Canada or S-K 1300 in the U.S. That’s not an impediment to Orca’s plans to build a pilot facility by 2027 and start commercial output by 2028, Perry said.

Early days

Under a United States Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy award, Orca is to file patents and hold trade secrets on its extraction methods, Perry said.

“We’re still doing needle-in-a-haystack screening of strain, site and timing,” he said. “I won’t say it’s going to replace mining…it may be a contributor.”

When asked, the executive could not say how many grams of scandium or rare earths appear in an average tonne of kelp or cite a flowsheet for downstream metals extraction.

But the company plans public reporting on blue carbon capture and ecosystem benefits under its Zero+ framework. The Zero+ framework demands zero waste, zero depletion, and zero human exploitation. It also needs to demonstrate clear benefits for ecosystems and communities. This includes measuring, reporting and verifying blue-carbon accounting, the amount of carbon captured and stored by marine ecosystems like seaweed farms. 

Canada cultivating minerals?

Global farmed seaweed production is around 30 million wet tonnes (3 million dry) each year. However, Perry sees potential for growth into the hundreds of millions or even billions of tonnes. This increase will come as genetics and cultivation methods improve.

Alaska alone could produce more seaweed than market dominator China. In Canada, British Columbia has a long coastline, which is perfect for growing kelp. Plus, there are marine permits that can be expanded. B.C. could support a comparable scale of farms to fuel both biofuel and mineral-recovery streams, according to Perry.

Orca is to use AI-driven geospatial modelling to locate areas with the highest metal concentrations in seawater. This method will help identify “sweet spots” where watershed chemistry boosts the uptake of target minerals.

Partnerships

While it’s still early days, Perry cited a joint venture struck recently with a Bay of Plenty iwi (a Māori tribal group or extended kinship network) in New Zealand that has secured permits for 100 sq. km of farm. That deal will serve as a template for similar equity structures with Canada’s coastal and Indigenous communities.

Meanwhile, biofuel trials produce ash with rare earths that are up to 10 million times more concentrated than in seawater. The by-products, rich in ammonia and potassium, could also tap into fertilizer markets to help cover costs.

Orca’s next steps entail biomass assays showing grams of target metals per tonne, results from the European partner’s separation pilot and defining a path to 99% metal purity.

Until then, cultivated seaweed as a source of critical minerals will remain an experiment without a proven grade or downstream chain.