S2 E63: How Metasorbex is Pioneering Sustainable Rare Earth Extraction

Dustin Olsen (00:40)
Everyone, welcome back to the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast. Today you're joined by me, Dustin, my co-host Daniel, and our special guest, Edward Chan, who's the CEO and founder of Metasorbex Edward, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Edward Chan (00:55)
Thank you very much. This is an exciting opportunity for us to discuss the important topic for the nation.

Dustin Olsen (01:01)
Absolutely. ⁓ We're excited to hear what Metastorbex is up to and kind of what makes you guys unique. But before we get to all of that, we would love to hear first a bit about your background and kind of the story, the journey that led up to founding this company.

Edward Chan (01:18)
Okay, I'm a trained chemical engineering by trade coming out of Caltech in Princeton and been in the corporate world for quite a while, for 20 some odd years, and ended up in a C suite managing four countries within R &D. And from there, I went into a nanomaterial space, three startups, nanotubes, nano…

playlist, which is graphene. And then today, looking at this particular space, using graphene as a platform to extract rare earth minerals from waste.

Dustin Olsen (01:51)
That's great. And how long have you been doing this? How long have you been in the industry?

Edward Chan (01:55)
In the startup space around 10 years, 10, 11 years, ⁓ specifically for Metasolvacs on this project, we started in 2023.

Dustin Olsen (02:04)
Got it, okay, so it's fairly new. So let's talk about really quick, what were you seeing in the industry that ultimately led you to start more metasorbics?

Edward Chan (02:07)
Mm-hmm.

You know, back in the day when we had COVID, you know, we're kind of wondering what we're going to do because we cannot travel, we cannot meet people. And fundamentally, we have to kind of rethink about how we do business. And if we're going to do business as a startup, we might start looking at this from a blank slate. What problem do you want to solve that would be impactful and that would be a legacy for us? So that's how we started.

And we chose ⁓ climate for one, climate change. And then eventually we see that as a platform to solving another major problem in supply chain. And that's very worth minerals.

Dustin Olsen (02:56)
Interesting. Interesting that COVID was kind of the trigger to kind of reevaluate ⁓ where to put your focus. So with Metasorbex and Rare Supply Chain, where do you guys fit into the supply chain? What is your specialty?

Edward Chan (03:15)
If you look at the entire supply chain of rare earth extraction and then eventually two magnets, you got the mines or the rocks, you got the waste or fly ash that we're looking at, then you got a step to kind of call it beneficiation, crush them into smaller pieces, then you got extraction, we call it leaching, then you got separation, purification, metalization.

alloying and the magnets. So we fit right in the middle of the separation stage.

Daniel O'Connor (03:46)
.

Dustin Olsen (03:46)
Okay, so separation, refining. Do you guys do anything with recycling?

Edward Chan (03:55)
The way that we think about our mission

is waste to feedstocks. So we're gonna be using a secondary source, coal fly ash, specifically type C, coal fly ash. Since you're in Utah, you're probably gonna be very familiar with the powder river basin. That's the kind of coal and coal fly ash we're gonna be tapping into. In terms of recycling, this is a major point because

Daniel O'Connor (04:07)
Yep.

Edward Chan (04:19)
The amount of earth in fly ash is under 300 ppm. So imagine you use a ton of fly ash and you get 300 grams of rare earth coming out of it. What it leaves you is a humongous amount of secondary waste. So we are looking at recycling of the secondary waste after we extract rare earth to redeploy that into cement. So kind of a circular format in what we do.

Daniel O'Connor (04:44)
I mean, I could jump in and say that a big challenge right now is ⁓ there's the upstream challenge of accessing feedstock and ⁓ at scale, and that's a work in progress. takes 19 years to build a mine. It takes a long time. during that process, there's ups and downs in the market, and the price can collapse, and all these mines go out of business.

And then they get bought up by some other country. ⁓

And the hardest part of that is separation at scale. It's not done at scale in the United States or anywhere out of China right now. Maybe a little bit in Linus in Malaysia and energy fuels a little bit here. MPs trying to start to ramp up. ⁓ But then you have this ⁓ waste product that if you could go in

and you could ⁓ treat, separate, and create the feedstock and then use the byproduct for something else, that could be a valuable contribution to ⁓ rebuilding the supply chain over here. Is that a good premise, what I just shared?

Edward Chan (06:05)
That's

exactly what we are looking at. We're looking at the showing the time frame of extracting minerals. think Rio Tinto trying to buy out another copper mine. That fell through. And the reason why they do that is exactly what you said. It takes a long while to activate a mine to make it productive. And so the big companies nowadays say forget this. Let's just go buy somebody and start.

optimizing the current mines that we have. So our mindset is let's not figure out that process. It is what it is. But look at a more immediate source of material that we can access. In this case, mine tailings could be one of them. But coal fly ash in the US, this is being tabulated by UT Austin. Five billion tons of this stuff is sitting around.

Daniel O'Connor (06:54)
So on that note, I think this is important. We speak with experts out there. We have a pretty wide network at this point. And when we talk about either recycling on the one hand or reuse of mine tailings or coal, fly ash, cetera, there's some skepticism. And yet there are startups that are starting to look at ⁓ these activities. Could you educate the audience?

When it comes to cold flash, are there different approaches? How is your approach different? And maybe break it down for more of a lay reader, even though we have scientists and pretty sophisticated people, it would be helpful to try to break it down and simplify it so that more people can understand what are different types of approaches and why you feel good about this approach.

Edward Chan (07:43)
Let's talk about the current approach and then we'll go into the different approaches that we're seeing and then our own approach which is highly differentiated. The current approach is called solvent extraction and that's been practiced in China and Malaysia through Linus, etc. And what that is is I'm going to talk about the chemical and then the chemical analogy. Solvent extraction is to use organic

Daniel O'Connor (08:01)
Yep.

Edward Chan (08:10)
plus an extractant inside the organic in a big bath of water. The water you get all the ions, the rare earth ions dissolved in it after leaching. And the objective is to have the solvent organic to absorb that little bit of ions in the water. So imagine as an analogy, you were asked to separate a penny and a dime. I mean, they're pretty…

pretty small differences. You cannot see it. You have a box of pennies and dimes in a corporate box. You stick your hand in there. You're supposed to separate it yourself. Not seeing it. And that's the extent of solvent extraction. You've got to many, many boxes to separate the dimes and the pennies. And this is where the process disadvantage of solvent extraction is. have many, many stages, like 100 stages.

to extract enough rare earth out of it. So today, what we're looking at coming from the outside is this is very process intensive and region intensive, water, acid, caustic, et cetera. Let's look at it from a standpoint of material science. So let's not have 100 stages, let's say 10 stages, but engineering the material in a way that would be effective.

And what I mean by that is capacity. That's the number one KPI that we're driving toward. If you have a high capacity to extract per mass of extractin, then you have less stages to use. And this is where the excitement going to be focusing on is looking at the material side of things. So from a standpoint of some of the other technologies, you got ionic liquids.

coming out of Oak Ridge, coming out of Georgia Tech. That group is looking at that particular approach. You got membrane, so it's kind of like a filtration mechanism. And then you got some of the electrochemical things going on that attract certain ions versus some of the other contaminant ions. Our approach is material-based.

by looking at a specific platform called Graphene. There are a lot of knobs that we can control, surface area, active sites, legons, and also the coordination chemistry.

Daniel O'Connor (10:25)
Sorry to interrupt you, ⁓ Edward, did you say graphene? Okay, yeah, that's a fascinating, I think we need to explain to the audience what that is too.

Edward Chan (10:28)
Yeah, graphene.

Okay.

Graphene used to be on top of everybody's mind back in 2018 when it was invoked. Now no one knows what that is. So graphene is a nanomaterial with high surface area, very stable, stable in a sense of acid and base chemistry in the extraction of the Earth. And from a standpoint of engineering material, this is the same platform we're using

to control active sites, ligands, and spatial density to absorb different ions.

Daniel O'Connor (11:06)
So, and graphene is a human made, it's not natural.

Edward Chan (11:11)
Get a synthetic.

Daniel O'Connor (11:12)
It's synthetic. so your technology is using this nanomaterial as a way to filter.

Edward Chan (11:21)
I would call it absorption.

Daniel O'Connor (11:24)
Absorption.

Edward Chan (11:25)
Yeah, basically the same as solvent extraction, they use the extractant to absorb the ions except we're using a solid solvent to absorb the ions.

Daniel O'Connor (11:31)
Right.

So you're using the solid and is this ⁓ something that is patented?

Edward Chan (11:40)
Yeah, in fact, we got one allowed, belong to Metasorbex. We got three applications submitted. One is in a non-pervational state, two is in a provisional state.

Daniel O'Connor (11:51)
Okay, so you have this proprietary ⁓ approach. Now, before we get deeper into the technology, let's talk about, you know, so most of the material is currently refined in mainland China. you know, it's all SX, like you said. Why is that?

there's large amounts of money that are being deployed in China to continuously innovate. Why are they still stuck? And everybody tells us, you got to do solvent extraction. Nothing else works at scale. Are you going to prove that wrong?

Edward Chan (12:33)
The innovation on solvent extraction today is around the margins. The fact that they started the process so early back in, I don't know, 1980s, 1990s.

Daniel O'Connor (12:45)
Yeah, late 80s, early 90s, I think.

Edward Chan (12:47)
If they were to change the entire process, they're going to have a lot of stranded assets, number one. So if you're in a large company, as I was, if you're going to change assets or stranded assets, you're going to get fired. It's just bottom line. You cannot just go into DuPont and say, hey, I'm going to mess everything up. I'm going try and use some new things. It doesn't fly.

Daniel O'Connor (12:59)
Yeah.

Yeah,

you're cannibalizing your whole revenue.

Edward Chan (13:10)
Yeah. Now, you can do it in parallel, but the fact that bulk of your earnings is coming from this major plant, that the burning resources to R &D effort doesn't make sense. So that's number one. The second thing is, believe it or not, this is not a very sexy space. We're not artificial intelligence. We're not anything like that. And so the talent base

the skill base that would attract go to AGI. It doesn't go to advanced materials or solvent extraction. So there's a lack of skill base ⁓ in this area versus the AGI type of technology.

Daniel O'Connor (13:47)
Right, right. So I guess what you're saying, and you correct me if you think I'm wrong, but the Chinese companies, the state-backed companies that dominate this space, they've had such a ⁓ kind of a monopolistic position, they really haven't had to innovate that much.

Edward Chan (14:04)
It's a competition.

Daniel O'Connor (14:05)
That's right. In fact, know what, Edward? The CCP and their president has to lecture these companies to innovate. You know you're in trouble if you're getting lectured by the CCP about having to innovate.

Edward Chan (14:22)
Think about this as another analogy, Kodak. Back in the day, we used to films and do things like this, right? Click on cameras. They were the first ones to innovate on a digital camera.

Daniel O'Connor (14:35)
Hmm.

Edward Chan (14:36)
Well

guess what? The management, senior management say that's not gonna work. That's gonna cannibalize our current business. Same thing here.

Daniel O'Connor (14:45)
Yeah, I could totally see that. well, let's get, know, and then Dustin jump in in a minute, but let's get into ⁓ where, you know, with this approach, how far are you along in the life cycle? Let's just say there's, you know, ⁓ alpha, beta, ⁓ you know, maybe a proof of concept pilot.

early commercial, commercial, along that spectrum, where are you at today?

Edward Chan (15:13)
We're at TL3, we're in lab. So we're not very far along, but we are getting some good discussions with different states to entertain ⁓ collaboration and share costing. So one is Louisiana, one is Wyoming.

Dustin Olsen (15:29)
think of your technology, can we talk about how it's different? So you said solvent extraction, 100 stages, where's yours different? Where do you gain efficiencies to move away from solvent extraction?

Edward Chan (15:45)
give you a kind of a quantitative feel. ⁓ Today, solvent extraction on a normalized basis is under order of five to 10 milligrams per gram. So 10 milligrams of rare earth material to a gram of extracted. We're 10 times that. So the capacity to absorb, meaning to collect all of the ions,

in one setting, we don't need as many stages. The second thing that we're doing is because we can tune the spatial geometry or density of those ligands to coordinate with the ions. That spacing is important because that's basically is going to be the desorption stage to separating different ions against the contaminant ions. So there's two factors that we have going on in our lab that's going to be very different.

Dustin Olsen (16:38)
Okay, interesting. you can do 10 times the amount of processing. Is that in half as many stages or do you still have 100 stages if you can just do more?

Edward Chan (16:49)
In terms of stages, as long as we can pick a number, extract say 95 % of the rare earth inside the aqueous solution that's being leached, that's good enough. Or if you want to do more, they have more stages, but the capacity that allows you to separate 10 times is going to be very cost effective.

Dustin Olsen (17:10)
Okay, so speaking of costs, sorry, Daniel, just one more question. So, some extraction has been around for a long time, it's cost effective, a lot of people implement it. Is yours cost effective as well? Is it more expensive, although more efficient? Where do you guys land in terms of cost structure?

Daniel O'Connor (17:10)
So.

Edward Chan (17:26)
I mean, this is all projection, right? We don't have the full cost analysis or full trial yet, but we believe that because of the capacity and the selectivity of the material, we're going to be much more cost effective than today's solvent extraction in capex and in apex. And one of the things that we are pushing is instead of looking at this centralized plant that we are deploying or China is deploying, looking at this in a modular format.

In other words, go to where the source is going to be and set up a small shop, so to speak, to extract the material and not to wait on this big mine. You have this big giant plant to construct. So having a modular format give us faster time to extract than having large plants because of just construction.

Daniel O'Connor (18:17)
So on that note, and that makes sense, and we've interviewed some other ⁓ companies that focus on more recycling where it's more decentralized, modular. ⁓ We've interviewed companies that build large modular refineries. ⁓ Big but modular. What's…

Can you, have you done any testing for heavy rare earths like terbium or disrobium? Can you, ⁓ do you have any metrics you could share based on the lab results so far?

Edward Chan (18:49)
We are focusing on the big four. So you just talked about two of them, dysplosium, terbium, the heavier ones, and then prisodium, neodymium. From the standpoint of the adjacency of those two different groups, we believe that we can extract 10X the separation. So the difficulty of separating terbium and dysplosium is because they're so close together in properties.

Daniel O'Connor (18:55)
Mm-hmm.

Edward Chan (19:14)
And the fact that we can engineer the thermodynamics of capture, the Gibbs free energy, that we can actually separate them much easier.

Daniel O'Connor (19:24)
Well, that's very important because you don't hear this much in the news, but you hear it at the rare earth exchanges. We're headed towards a very severe crunch. I mean, it's going to be really bad soon. know, companies don't know what to do. So let's just, you know, I know you all are, ⁓ it's a new company. just a couple of years old. You're looking to raise, you're raising capital.

Walk us through, let's say capital is raised, what's the use of funds? How will you get us from where we are today to an alternative source and how long will that take?

Edward Chan (19:57)
The use of funds is simple.

Coming from the corporate background, are very capital efficient. In other words, we're not going to spend money, you know.

cutting metal. We're going to be leveraging the process or part of the equipment either in Wyoming or Louisiana. We're going to be owning the material only. So we're going to be looking at producing material, the solvent that we are looking at to extract where we So the first thing that we are looking at is to hire at least two PhDs, one in chemistry and one in engineering. And basically that's going to replace me.

so that we can do more work together in our lab. That would get us to stage a TRL 405, losing the 3 million bucks. We're be looking at matching funds at different states to basically amplify the equity capital. So after the first stage going into series A, we're looking at to raise $10 million. That would bring us to TRL six or seven.

materials we're to be looking at extracting say a million tons of fly ash to get say 10 tons of products, know 10 ppm ⁓ as metric. So that's going to be the stage we're looking at to progress from today at three million dollars capital raise to ten million dollars. We're going to be very lenient in personnel because we don't want to

Daniel O'Connor (21:08)
Right.

Edward Chan (21:22)
carry the fixed cost. We're going to be leveraging universities where we have matching grants so that we can be more effective.

Daniel O'Connor (21:29)
And what's the timeline to proof of concept? Let's say capital race happens in 2026. Based on your planning, when do you produce a report that says, here's the output, here's the purity grade, and

We want to start doing business with magnet companies that need it. when would that be? Ballpark. How far away are you?

Edward Chan (22:01)
The three million bucks is going to be 24 months of runway. This is not counting the matching grants. We're not counting that matching grant. We're just going to just standing on the three million bucks. If you get matching grants, then you go longer. We're going to be getting to the point of supplying honey orders on the order of several kilograms of rare earth oxide downstream to the magnetic producers.

Daniel O'Connor (22:07)
Matching grants,

Edward Chan (22:24)
So they're going to be looking at metalization and alloying of that. ⁓ In terms of the next round of funding, we're a minimum of 10 kilo type of size.

Daniel O'Connor (22:39)
10 kilo, okay, okay. So, I mean, at scale, let's just say, you you go through these exercises 24 months, what does it look like at scale? Like you can locate these in some decentralized areas, Wyoming, a few. Now, are you running, are you licensing this to some other mining company or are you running this yourself? What's your business model?

Edward Chan (22:40)
of blue earth oxides.

Yeah, that's a good question. In terms of what we like to do, our business model is to supply the consumables, the solvent, and license the technology or the process to a real oxide reducer.

Daniel O'Connor (23:17)
Right, right. So you're providing a very valuable piece of the value chain. And ⁓ it's done through a license or however the transaction happens. ⁓ And what's the rate? you can process it. I'm just trying to get a sense of how much you could produce.

per modular facility, how much rare earth can you produce a year, both ⁓ the lights and the heavies?

Edward Chan (23:54)
We are targeting on a load of 100 tons per year at scale.

Daniel O'Connor (23:58)
100 tons at scale.

Edward Chan (24:00)
per plant, per modular unit.

Daniel O'Connor (24:02)
per plant.

So that, I mean, you must be going through an awful lot of coal ash. How much of the input waste are you going through?

Edward Chan (24:15)
It is almost one for one, right? Because if you look at the UT Austin's analysis, the magnetic world is under 50 ppm, give or take. So a ton of fly ash can produce a ton of waste, minus the 50 ppm. So we are going to be processing a lot of cool fly ash. That's why Wyoming is attractive.

Daniel O'Connor (24:31)
Right.

Right. ⁓ Maybe talk about that a little bit. Why is, for the audience, why is this particular region important for pole flash? Maybe just break it down.

Edward Chan (24:48)
Right now, in fact, we just spoke with them today, they have around 10 million tons of fly ash sitting uncapped. It sounds a lot, but it's not a lot. And they have type C co-fly ash. Now that's important because type C is easier to extract where it was just type F. Type F is encapsulated with silicates.

So it's difficult to pull out the rare earth. So type C or the mountain or the Powder River Basin Coal is ideal for us to extract the rare earth. And the second thing that's important is because they have an active landfill and the coal mines, not the coal mines, the coal-fired plants, they won't be shutting down anytime soon. They're pretty new. Whereas the different part of the country in eastern part,

Some of those are northbound. And what that means is ⁓ the impoundment of fly ash is capped. That has problems in terms of permitting.

Daniel O'Connor (25:46)
So type C, can you ⁓ delineate for a lay person? What is type C coal flash?

Edward Chan (25:53)
There are different minerals inside coal and therefore coal fire ash. ⁓ Type C has much more calcium but less rare earth elements than type F. Type F is more toward the Appalachian type of coal whereas type C is right down to the Pauver River.

Daniel O'Connor (26:16)
Okay. so the coal just, mean, coal is carbon. So what happens? So geologically, that waste, is the other things just in there or do they go in there from the processing of making the coal? When does geologically, and maybe that's a question you might not be able to answer, but if you can, we have geologists look at geologically,

Edward Chan (26:21)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel O'Connor (26:44)
How do the rare earths get into the coal waste?

Edward Chan (26:46)
Yeah,

I'm not a geologist, but talking with folks who are specialists in this area, cool seams have those type of elements in there already. So the railroad is not being created during a pulverization or gasification.

Daniel O'Connor (27:03)
And I'm assuming, is there any thorium or uranium?

Edward Chan (27:08)
That I don't know. ⁓ No, that I do know. The mines have thorium and uranium, but the coal seam do not, because the analysis coming out of Kentucky did not show that.

Daniel O'Connor (27:21)
OK. And that's important, right? Because that would be another layer of compliance processes and procedures. So it sounds like, now, let's talk a little bit. There is this urgency for heavy rare earths now. We may have a surplus of light rare earths within 24 months, maybe. So there is an emergency need.

Edward Chan (27:27)
that's bad news.

Daniel O'Connor (27:47)
Let's just say ⁓ come November, China shuts off all access to rare earths. All. They're powering their own economy. Maybe there's some other things going on. We're in deep trouble at that point. There's an emergency. Edward Chan and company can set up these emergency ⁓ separation facilities. Correct?

Edward Chan (28:10)
That's why modular concept makes sense.

Daniel O'Connor (28:12)
Yes. So, ⁓ you know, that could be, you know, part of a business. I think there's going to be a need for some urgency, I think, based on what we know. Okay. ⁓ So, you know, I think that have you thought through in your business plan, sort of urgency contingencies where

you know, maybe it's more cost and you'll have to be paid for that, but you'll be able to mobilize faster. How far away are we from that? You still are in the lab. Like how far, if there is an emergency, if there's a national emergency and we need to get these important elements fast, how competent are you?

Edward Chan (28:54)
⁓

The critical path for us to scale is human beings. Like I need to hire several, maybe four five PhDs and just hammering at the chemistry and refinement. And more importantly on the process because they are linked together. The material, if we can have access to Wyoming's Type C.

Daniel O'Connor (29:07)
PhDs.

Edward Chan (29:20)
That's And so what we love to do is to figure out the chemistry inside that separation mechanism. And this is where we have the critical path, is we don't have enough trained scientists to work in this area.

Dustin Olsen (29:35)
you

Daniel O'Connor (29:36)
And Edward, we've talked about that. We've written about that and we've talked about that. A big that we have some industrial policy now, but what the nation is not looking at really is the labor pool, the talent base. This is mission critical. ⁓ know, India and China each produce, I think it's a million engineers and we're producing maybe 50,000 or something. So, and that's across all engineering. So.

What do you have some ideas? mean, you're a scientist. You've worked in the corporate, you know, you've been in academia, you've worked in the corporate sector, and you've been in the startup sector. What can we do as a nation to ⁓ develop more talent in this area?

Edward Chan (30:19)
So short term, ⁓ I would lean on the national labs. I they are the best and the brightest. And I would deploy those guys instead of ⁓ looking at a specific science, I would focus them on, here's a project. I'm gonna 10 guys in there, 10 PhDs at this problem. You got 12 months. Give me a stage gate to process this whole project.

and having that type of SWAT team to move faster. And having businesses big and small as a receiver of the technology to scale. That's what we do short term. Long term, I think part of the change from software to hardware ⁓ is already happening.

folks looking at physical products to be much more important than software. And software has its days. But unless we have some physical product that we can produce.

Daniel O'Connor (31:16)
Yeah.

Edward Chan (31:23)
we're gonna be in trouble.

Daniel O'Connor (31:24)
Yeah. And I like, you know, with the national labs, and I don't know if you're collaborating, for example, with Idaho national labs, but I think we were mentioning before we started that they're a great group of guys. They've been on this show and they're doing, they're starting a separation pilot facility and other important projects are working with industry. So I think that's starting to happen. I think, you know, your observation about

Edward Chan (31:43)
Hmm.

Daniel O'Connor (31:51)
⁓ national labs getting activated. I think that's happening, so that's a good thing.

Dustin, ⁓ as we get closer towards the end here, any other questions on your mind?

Dustin Olsen (32:03)
Yeah, I think this is all really interesting what Edward and your team are doing. ⁓ But I am curious, what keeps you up at night? What are you still trying to figure out?

Edward Chan (32:18)
So two aspects, the funding aspect is always as a founder, the major task we need to accomplish. And the second is human resources. I think the science is sound, but unless I can have guys or gals dedicated and focused on this every day, we're not gonna go anywhere.

So very much like any organization, not funding per se, but human resources is top of mind for any chief executive.

Dustin Olsen (32:48)
Absolutely. And we see that in various areas too throughout the industry is the humans, the personnel, the talent to help drive all this forward is going to be a big, big hole to fill. ⁓ So Edward, final question here before we wrap up. What are some milestones people should watch for from your company Metasorbics over the next few years?

Daniel O'Connor (32:56)
you .

Dustin Olsen (33:18)
to basically that signals to them you are achieving success.

Edward Chan (33:25)
We've been through

several accelerators before, so the stages of how to progress is pretty clear. assuming funding is not an issue, we're going to be progressing from a lab stage to a pilot. Obviously, we're going to have press releases and so forth to indicate capacity. That's a key metric that we commit to, capacity to absorb ions per gram of solvent.

Daniel O'Connor (33:29)
.

you

Edward Chan (33:51)
From there, looking at larger scale, say a kilo to 10 kilo to 100 kilo type of capacity. And so we're progressing toward pilot scale and then semi works and then toward a bigger plant that we can call it first of a kind. Basically looking at a TRL progression.

Dustin Olsen (34:09)
Very good. And for those who would like to get in touch with you, follow along, where should we send them?

Edward Chan (34:16)
You can go to our website or can send an email to me directly. It's pretty simple. It's hiltwood.chan at medisophics.com.

Dustin Olsen (34:25)
Perfect. That's great. And for those who are listening, if you found this episode helpful, please give it a thumbs up so that it shows up for other people as well who might find it useful as well. If you do want to miss a future show, please subscribe. Edward, thank you so much for being on the show with us. Very informational, very exciting, the work that you're doing in terms of innovating and making the extraction process.

the refining a little more efficient. Hopefully we'll have you get on the show in the future for an update to see how you guys are doing.

Edward Chan (34:59)
Yeah, this would be my pleasure to interact with you guys.

Dustin Olsen (35:03)
Great, thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon.

Edward Chan (35:04)
Okay, bye.