Optimizing Technologies

Why optimization matters in Yuma County

The proposed EVelution Energy facility would be located in an arid region where groundwater is a limited, long-term resource.

EVelution states its facility would recycle about 70% of its process water and use roughly 34 acre-feet of net freshwater per month — about 408 acre-feet a year. That’s a real improvement over a process that uses fresh water once and discharges it. But 70% recycling isn’t necessarily the ceiling. Elsewhere in the industry, water use, metal recovery, chemical efficiency, and individual process steps have kept improving well after a plant’s original design was finished.

Source: EVelution Energy — July 27, 2026 groundwater and water-use announcement

The examples below aren’t a claim that any of these technologies could simply be dropped into the Yuma facility. Feedstock chemistry, water quality, climate, energy supply, and economics differ from site to site. Instead, they show what’s already being done — or actively studied — elsewhere, as a basis for asking what’s been evaluated for Yuma.

1. Finland: cutting water use at an established cobalt refinery

Umicore’s Kokkola refinery in Finland has processed cobalt for more than 50 years. Umicore reports the operation now uses about 500 liters less water per kilogram of cobalt refined than it did in 2000.

That matters for a simple reason: water efficiency at an operating refinery isn’t fixed at the level available when the plant was originally designed. It keeps improving through changes in processing, water treatment, and operating practice.

Source: Umicore — Kokkola water-use efficiency and environmental improvements

2. Canada: designing cobalt sulfate production around lower freshwater use

Electra Battery Materials, formerly First Cobalt, is developing a cobalt sulfate refinery in Temiskaming Shores, Ontario — the same broad product proposed for Yuma.

In 2020, the company commissioned a third-party life-cycle assessment prepared by Minviro comparing its planned refinery with a benchmark refinery in China. The study estimated freshwater consumption of about 3.38 kg of water per kg of cobalt sulfate produced, compared with 12.5 kg for the benchmark facility — a 73% reduction.

Two caveats matter here. First, this is a modeled estimate from a feasibility-stage design, commissioned by the company itself, not a measurement from years of commercial operation. Second, Ontario is a very different setting. The numbers therefore do not transfer directly to a groundwater-dependent site in Arizona.

What the example does show is that water demand can be engineered stream by stream. Cooling water, process water, wash water, and treatment water don’t have to be managed as one undifferentiated total.

Source: Electra Battery Materials — First Cobalt Refinery Life Cycle Assessment

3. Finland: recovering more cobalt and optimizing pressure leaching

Researchers at Aalto University modeled a prospective battery-grade cobalt sulfate process for a hypothetical Finnish gold-cobalt ore deposit that isn’t yet in commercial production.

Using process simulation, they estimated cobalt recovery in roughly the 78–88% range under the scenarios studied, with much of the loss occurring in filter wash water. Improving how that wash water is treated, the researchers estimated, could raise recovery to about 96%.

The same study identified improved oxygen utilization during pressure leaching as another opportunity to reduce energy use and environmental impacts.

This is process modeling, not a report of what an operating refinery is achieving. The ore studied is also chemically different from the feedstock proposed for Yuma, which limits how directly the results can be compared. What the study does show is that meaningful improvements may come from optimizing individual stages of an existing process rather than replacing the entire process.

Sources: Aalto University repository  |  Published peer-reviewed paper

4. Canada and Norway: turning secondary material into feedstock

Glencore’s Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations in Canada has processed secondary nickel- and cobalt-bearing materials — including battery materials, aerospace and superalloy scrap, plating residues, and spent catalysts — since about 1990.

In 2020, it processed about 20,000 tonnes of recyclable material containing roughly 4,600 tonnes of nickel, 2,000 tonnes of cobalt, and 800 tonnes of copper. Material from this integrated system is further refined through Glencore’s nickel-refining operations, including Nikkelverk in Norway.

This is established industrial practice, not a laboratory demonstration. One caveat is important: Sudbury’s route includes smelting and refining and is technologically different from the hydrometallurgical acid-leaching process proposed for Yuma. Accepting secondary feedstock at a facility like EVelution’s could therefore require additional processing steps rather than simply a change in sourcing.

Recycling cannot replace primary cobalt supply today, but it can recover valuable metals from material that might otherwise be treated as waste.

Source: Glencore — Integrated Nickel Operations celebrates 30 years in recycling

The larger point: designing for continuous improvement

No single technology above is the main lesson. The main lesson is that industrial processes can continue improving after a plant is built. Over a facility’s operating life — often decades — water treatment, filtration, metal recovery, sensors and controls, and energy efficiency may all improve, and materials once treated as waste may become recoverable resources.

A facility can be designed either to make later upgrades difficult or to make it easier to adopt new, commercially proven technology as it becomes available.

Industrially proven vs. emerging

Not every technology described above is at the same stage of readiness, and it’s worth being precise about that:

• Operating at industrial scale
  Long-term water-efficiency improvements at established cobalt refining operations such as Kokkola, and industrial-scale processing of secondary nickel- and cobalt-bearing materials at Sudbury.
• In commercial development
  Electra’s Ontario refinery, whose water performance is projected and has not yet been demonstrated through sustained commercial operation.
• Research and modeling
  Improved wash-water cobalt recovery and pressure-leaching optimization, which show potential but are not presented here as demonstrated commercial performance for EVelution’s particular process.

Innovation should be encouraged, but claims should match the level of evidence behind them.

Could lower-quality groundwater be treated instead of blended with deeper water?

The groundwater investigation raises a related question that matters especially in an arid region.

BasinWells found that the project’s required well yield could likely be met using groundwater from the Upper Sandy Unit alone, but that chloride and total dissolved solids (TDS) in that water would be excessively elevated. The recommended well design instead draws from two separated intervals — roughly 300–520 feet and 1,160–1,500 feet — to reduce chloride and TDS concentrations in the produced water.

That raises a fair technical question: could the lower-quality upper groundwater instead be treated to the quality required for industrial use, reducing or avoiding the need to supplement it with better-quality water pumped from the deeper Lower Unit?

Treatment of saline water is already used at very large mining operations. In northern Chile, BHP’s Spence copper concentrator operates with desalinated seawater, while Escondida has also shifted its operational supply away from aquifer withdrawals and toward desalinated seawater.

Sources: BHP — Spence copper concentrator and desalinated water  |  BHP — groundwater reduction and water-efficiency strategy

These Chilean examples are not direct equivalents to Yuma. They involve seawater desalination rather than treatment of EVelution’s Upper Sandy Unit groundwater. But they demonstrate the broader industrial principle that lower-quality alternative water sources can be treated at large scale to reduce dependence on groundwater or other limited freshwater supplies.

Whether treatment of the Upper Sandy Unit alone would work for EVelution’s particular process depends on the groundwater chemistry, the treatment required, energy demand, cost, recovery rate, and how any brine or concentrate would be managed.

If technically feasible, treating upper-zone water alone could reduce pumping from the deeper, higher-quality groundwater zone and avoid drawing from two widely separated intervals in the same production well.

But the comparison cuts both ways. Treatment can create its own costs and environmental impacts, including energy consumption and a concentrated brine stream requiring management or disposal. Drawing from both groundwater zones may also offer operational advantages such as greater yield reliability and lower treatment requirements.

The fair question therefore isn’t whether saline-water treatment is possible in principle. It is:

What could be asked of the Yuma project?

The point of looking at technologies used elsewhere isn’t to prescribe a specific engineering solution from outside the project. It’s to raise fair, reasonable questions before a facility expected to operate for decades is built:

• What technologies were evaluated to increase water recycling beyond 70%?
• What’s the limiting factor today — chemistry, energy demand, cost, waste concentration, or something else?
• Has a complete water balance been published showing where freshwater enters the process and where it ultimately leaves?
• Could individual water streams be treated and reused separately rather than combined?
• What metals or chemicals remain in wash water, brine, and process residues, and could more be recovered?
• Could process chemicals such as acids or extractants be recovered and reused rather than consumed once?
• Which proven technologies used at other cobalt and nickel processing facilities were evaluated?
• Could the facility eventually process recycled cobalt-bearing material?
• Is the facility designed so that improved treatment and recovery technology can be added later?
• What performance data — water use, recovery rates, energy use, and waste generated — will be reported publicly over time?

From “best available today” to continuous improvement

A technology can be the right choice when a facility is designed and still be improved later. That’s normal in industrial development. The goal isn’t to assume today’s design is permanently the best achievable outcome, but to have a way of evaluating new, commercially proven technology as it becomes available:

Build → Measure → Compare → Improve

If a new treatment technology becomes commercially proven and can meaningfully reduce groundwater use, waste, energy demand, or environmental risk, there should be a process for evaluating whether adopting it makes technical and economic sense.