Kaolin tailings are Georgia’s hidden gateway to critical minerals in AI era
"By investing in innovations now, Georgia can become a national leader in critical minerals resilience," write Dr. Yuanzhi Tang and Dr. Scott McWhorter of Georgia Tech. (Dreamstime/TNS)
In the mid-1990s, a Department of Energy-funded project helped catalyze one of the most transformative breakthroughs in American energy history: the development of a horizontal drilling bit capable of withstanding the extreme conditions of shale formations.
Before this innovation, natural gas trapped in tight shale rock was considered too expensive and technically challenging to extract.
