Microparticle refining: taking critical-mineral processing from months to minutes

Key points

Key takeaways from the Climate Cowboys interview with Determinant Materials founder and CEO Nikhil Gupta (October 2026):

Refining is the bottleneck, not mining. Gupta argues that up to 90% of the world's critical-metal processing is concentrated in China, and that mines exist in almost every country — the real choke point is smelting and refining, which is why most ore and concentrate still sails east before returning as finished metal.

Microparticle refining. Determinant Materials holds a patented process that separates metals at the microparticle scale — roughly a million times larger than an atom — using fluid mechanics rather than chemical reactions that break feedstock down to the atomic layer. That is why processing shrinks from the weeks or months of high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL) to minutes or hours, at roughly 50% lower cost.

A full-stack platform. Unlike single-input refiners, the technology accepts scraps, mineral ores, used electronics and manufacturing defects and can output a variety of metals. The company sells modular drop-in units that sit on site at mine sites, defence primes — Gupta cites titanium for missiles as an example — and scrap yards, so refining happens where the material is.

A $3 trillion market. Gupta puts the global critical-metals market at roughly $3 trillion and wants Determinant Materials to be the key refining layer within it, a goal he says is attainable because the underlying science differs so completely from incumbent chemistry.

China's leverage in practice. After China banned tungsten exports the metal's price jumped about tenfold overnight, an anecdote he recounts from a conversation with a hedge fund that crystallises the concentration risk — and why the White House and both parties now push funds toward critical minerals, with the Office of Strategic Capital dedicating a large share of its budget to them.

Onshore, not nearshore. Gupta rejects nearshoring as insufficient for sovereignty and national security, arguing processing must happen in the United States to drive economic resilience, good jobs and reindustrialisation; he is also sceptical of upstream "revolutionising mining" pitches, since a new mine takes a decade or more to ramp while refining offers the near-term fix.

Outsider's breakthrough. A chemical engineer who ran a microparticle separations unit at Shell, he first understood the problem from climate tech — solar, wind, batteries and EVs move the economy from fossil fuels to an "exotic metal" base — watched the space for over a decade, and credits the innovator's dilemma for why incumbents never built it first.

Read more: Climate Cowboys on YouTube