Outokumpu and MIT Develop EvoMaterials Platform to Transform Critical Metal Extraction

For more than a century, industrial metallurgy has relied on the same fundamental chemical foundations to separate metals from ores. While control systems have grown smarter and industrial smelting operations have expanded, the underlying separation methods remain energy- and carbon-intensive.

To address this legacy challenge, sustainable stainless steel manufacturer Outokumpu has unveiled EvoMaterials, a proprietary technology platform designed to overhaul how critical metals are extracted from raw ores and industrial waste streams.

A New Chemical Pathway for Extraction

EvoMaterials originated from research into sulfidation-based processing technologies aimed at cutting emissions in ferrochrome production. Outokumpu—which already produces ferrochrome with a 67% lower carbon footprint than the global industry average—began developing the technology in the United States in 2021 using chromite from its Kemi mine in Finland, the only operational chrome mine in the European Union.

Supported in part by a non-exclusive patent license agreement from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the platform diverges from traditional carbon-heavy smelting. Laboratory trials showed that alternative chemical environments can separate metallic elements more efficiently, minimizing unwanted by-products and recovering high-value metals from low-grade resources and industrial side streams once considered waste.

“The technology is a new application for separating metallic elements from materials,” said Antoine Allanore, professor of metallurgy at MIT. He noted that creating a different chemical environment allows for extraction with fewer losses and lower emissions compared to conventional techniques.

Interdisciplinary Science and Advanced Modeling

The platform sits at the convergence of chemistry, materials science, physics, computational modeling, and engineering. Researchers are leveraging advanced simulation tools and artificial intelligence to evaluate and identify promising chemical pathways before validating them through physical experimentation.

“We decided to go beyond the current constraints and look fundamentally at what’s the best way to do this with the benefit of the scientific engineering knowledge and hindsight that we have today,” explained Caspar Stinn, technical director for extractive metallurgy at Outokumpu. Stinn completed his doctorate at MIT, where his work focused on low-carbon metal processing and recycling. “Science today is much more interdisciplinary than it was, and the collaboration across disciplines reveals new scientific opportunities.”

Securing Supply Chains for Strategic Technologies

The demand for critical materials is climbing steadily, fueled by high-temperature applications across aerospace, power generation, defense, energy infrastructure, and data centers. However, Western economies have simultaneously faced declining domestic processing capacity for these strategic elements.

Rather than serving as a single-purpose solution, EvoMaterials is structured as a broad technology platform. Allanore pointed out that once the underlying chemical separation pathway is mastered for one material system, the core principles can be applied to other strategic metals facing supply-chain constraints, including nickel and molybdenum.

Commercial Roadmap to 2030

Outokumpu is now moving EvoMaterials toward pilot-scale validation. The company plans to open a pilot facility in New Hampshire in the first half of 2027.

The New Hampshire plant will scale the proprietary process from laboratory environments to one-ton production batches. If pilot testing succeeds, Outokumpu targets full industrial-scale deployment by 2030, aiming to supply low-carbon, chromium-enriched ferrochrome and pure chromium metal while establishing a reusable framework for critical materials processing.