The focus of this symposium will be on critical minerals, rare metals—less common metals or minor metals (those are not covered by other TMS symposia), such as antimony, bismuth, barium, beryllium, boron, calcium, chromium, gallium, germanium, hafnium, indium, lithium, manganese, molybdenum, platinum group metals, rare earth metals, rhenium, scandium, selenium, sodium, strontium, tantalum, tellurium, and tungsten.

Critical element processing will cover bio-metallurgy, hydro-metallurgy, and electro-metallurgy. Novel high-temperature processes such as biomimicking leaching and separation, external forces stimulated separations, microwave heating, solar-thermal reaction synthesis, and cold crucible synthesis of critical elements will be considered. Processing design of extraction technologies and equipment used in these processes will be included from industry, as well as laboratory and pilot plant studies.

Note regarding publication: Authors seeking an oral or poster presentation opportunity must submit a manuscript for the proceedings or be accepted for publication in a TMS journal.