S2 E61: How Supra’s Cartridges Are Changing the Recycling Game

Dustin Olsen (00:40)
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast. You're joined by me, Dustin, my co-host Daniel, and our special guest, Katie Durham, who is the CEO of Supra. Katie, welcome to the show. How are you?

Katie Durham (Supra) (00:52)
I'm good, how are you? ⁓

Dustin Olsen (00:55)
Good,

Katie, we're really excited to have you on the show and to learn more about your journey and what your business up to. But to get us started, we always like to ask our guests a little bit about your background, kind of what led you here today with your experience and other things.

Katie Durham (Supra) (01:11)
Yeah, absolutely. So I've been passionate about resource efficiency and recycling for a very long time. It is true that one of my college essays was titled Beyond the Blue Bins and it was about revamping my high school's recycling system. So I go deep on this topic and I've spent my entire career working at clean energy startups.

So yeah, it's been a long time passion of mine. And when my co-founder, Jordan, reached out to me last summer and shared Supers Tech with me, I was thrilled and really excited about the opportunity to help commercialize a recycling technology that works on such a granular level of actually extracting these critical minerals from waste streams. yeah.

Dustin Olsen (01:57)
That's great.

Very interesting. So for those that are new to Supra, give us a high level overview of what you guys specialize in.

Katie Durham (Supra) (02:04)
Absolutely. So I'll show you here. We have a cartridge. So SUPRA has a critical mineral recoveries technology and we've designed these proprietary cartridges that actually absorb critical minerals. So each one is printed, pre-printed with a proprietary polymer and our polymer

Daniel O'Connor (02:17)
.

Katie Durham (Supra) (02:26)
are with receptors and those receptors are tuned for specific elements. So right now we can recover galliums, gandium, and cobalt and we're working on developing cartridges for other critical minerals and that is the focus of our business.

Daniel O'Connor (02:43)
That's amazing. That's amazing. Katie, you know, before we dive in, because this is fascinating, okay? This is really, really interesting. This is a big, big problem, right? If you can solve this problem or be even part of that, it's game changing. But let's take a step back, you know.

If we look at rare earth elements, for example, and the pathway to recycling magnets, the standard number is 1%, maybe it's 2%, 3%, what have you. It really, it's been very hard to recycle. And on the critical mineral side, I believe as well, we're learning more about that. Big picture, why has recycling been so hard? mean, because there's different groups looking at different approaches.

The Department of Defense or Department of War has talked about the importance. Tell us a little bit of big picture about why it's important. Why have there been challenges and we'll start to work into this UT spinoff, I believe it is.

Katie Durham (Supra) (03:38)
Sure, absolutely. So one of the reasons it's been very difficult to recycle is because it's very difficult to separate out individual metals from each other, especially metals that are very similar to each other. So if a current technology is just using electrostatics, they're going to struggle to separate out.

the elements that are more closely related from an electrostatic standpoint on the periodic table. And so a lot of startups, including ours, are looking at different methods. And the problem that we're really focused on are these rare earths and these the lanthanides, scandium, yttrium. They're very, very hard to separate from each other. And right now we're seeing best in class results for those separations because our technology combines super molecular chemistry.

that goes beyond electrostatics, it does chemical recognition, it looks at weight, looks at size, shape, and it creates kind of a puzzle piece that fits in. And then we're also combining that with material science innovations and engineering innovations to make this possible. that really is the fundamental technology challenge that we're addressing.

Daniel O'Connor (04:47)
So what I hear you saying is that you're bringing multiple scientific disciplines to this problem three dimensionally to attack this. This is very exciting. Now tell us a little bit about the history. How did this idea come to fruition? I know it comes out of the university, but just high level, what's the genesis?

Katie Durham (Supra) (05:06)
Yeah.

So my co-founder, his father, Dr. Jonathan Sessler, is one of our three inventors. And I'll tell you a little background on him because he's really fascinating. And he's a super molecular, he's a chemist and he is one of the…

fathers, grandfathers, whatever you want to call it, of supermolecular receptor development. And he's done that. He's a multi-time cancer survivor, and he's done that mostly for cancer drugs, because these receptors are highly specific. So they can actually go in and latch to cancer cells. They're used a lot in cancer imaging now, because they can catch and then release. so that's, it's interesting background, because he's specialized in this for a very long time. And a number of years ago, one of his colleagues that

T. Austin approached him and said, it would be interesting if we could use these receptors to target metals and critical minerals.

as they were thinking about this critical minerals recovery problem. so Dr. Sessler and then his two co-inventors, Dr. Page and Dr. Cullinan, they basically, the three of them came together and put the solution in place to solve the critical minerals recovery problem specifically. So they got DOE funding to work on developing this platform. And that was the origin, was really looking at repurposing

existing technology for critical minerals recovery.

Daniel O'Connor (06:29)
Absolutely

fascinating. it has a very good genesis, top scientists. You got early DOE funding to help figure out how to get this to a stage where we might be able to commercialize it. Fast forward, you now have a startup and you're embarking down the pathway to do this. And if we look at the pathway to execution in the market commercial, like

Can you give us a sense of where you're at right now and high level, you know, what you have to do without, you know, getting in too many details, but just enough so everybody can appreciate where you're at.

Katie Durham (Supra) (07:02)
Yeah, absolutely. So we are still working out of the lab at UT Austin and we continue to develop our platform through sponsored research at UT. And then the postdocs and PhD students that are working on this are a talent pipeline for us. So we're planning to hire them as they finish their studies in-house at SUPRA. From a commercialization standpoint, we're focused on testing the real world feedstocks now. So I spend my days speaking with mines about their tailings with

factories about their industrial waste with e-waste processors around the country and we are receiving a lot of compositional analyses and assays. We're receiving a lot of feedstock samples to our lab and the focus for the next few months for us is testing these real-world feedstocks in the lab so we better understand how our technology performs in different real-world scenarios from a feedstock standpoint and then from there we'll be able to enter some commercial contracts

tracks and we're planning to deploy systems co-located with many of these feedstocks. So we'll first work on developing the flow sheets in Austin and we're working on a facility in Austin right now about a 4,000 square foot facility in Austin to develop those flow sheets and then we'll have our partners implement our systems and we'll develop our systems on site co-located with feedstocks.

Daniel O'Connor (08:23)
That's exciting, very exciting, Katie. I mean, this is really, again, we've looked for this type of news, right? Because this is absolutely key part of how we innovate out of this crisis. There's no other way but scientific innovation in my mind. I have some more questions, but Dustin, please take the floor for a minute.

Dustin Olsen (08:41)
Yeah,

so Katie, I'm really intrigued with your involvement still at UT Austin. And we've talked with a few academics we're hearing there's not as much interest. People aren't looking to be in the rare earth or critical mineral space in any capacity. What is your experience with that? Are you getting a lot of interest, a lot of people who want to be a part of this or what do think?

Katie Durham (Supra) (09:07)
Yeah,

I would say we're receiving a lot of interest. think that because we are a startup and there's a certain amount of academics that want to go into industry and want to work at startups.

We are getting a lot of interest because we offer that opportunity. So across the street of working on some really interesting scientific challenges that you need a PhD to work on and the opportunity to be part of a venture. you know, we do some of the fun startup things like they went ax throwing last week and we are building a culture that we hope is really fun for people to be a part of. And then there's, you know, equity and financial upside as well for everyone working on this.

Dustin Olsen (09:51)
That's great. That's good that there's interest. One of the things we think in this industry that we're, in addition to maybe capital to drive everything forward is we need talent and we need people who are interested in developing this talent. So it's encouraging to hear from your perspective that people want to learn more and be a part of things like what Super is doing to kind of move the entire initiative forward. That's really awesome.

Katie Durham (Supra) (10:04)
Yeah.

⁓ Yeah,

Daniel O'Connor (10:20)
.

Katie Durham (Supra) (10:20)
we have eight scientists and the three inventors, so 11 total chemists and engineers that are working on this every day. they're… Yeah.

Dustin Olsen (10:30)
That's

awesome.

Daniel O'Connor (10:31)
I wanted to dust in, if we look at back to the mines and the sites that have recycled feed or waste product, is there any sense, or it's maybe too early, but are there categories of feedstock or of waste product, electronics, what have you, that

that might have more sort of sweet spot that you could share? mean, what learnings are you finding at a high level that are disclosable at this point?

Katie Durham (Supra) (10:58)
Yeah, I mean, there definitely feedstocks that have higher concentrations of the elements that we're targeting. So that's always nice. Though I would say we also get great results at low concentration. So we're one of the only technologies, I think, that will be profitable with very low concentrations environments. That said, there's always efficiencies you can gain with certain feedstock advantages. And then…

You know, some feedstocks have already been processed. If they're in a waste stream, some, we call them like nuisance elements have been removed. And in some cases they're still present. And we can work with, you know, small quantities of iron.

silica these typical nuisance elements, our technology is actually very strong and be able to handle some of those environments, but there's obviously quantities that might be too large or change the economics. I would say I, you know, I can't speak specifically about any one companies or feedstock, but we are learning that for the most part, our platform and our cartridges are proving to be very versatile and very flexible and working with more feedstocks.

than conventional methods have been working with. And so we're very optimistic that we can genuinely open up the feedstock market and create this national resilience through having a more diverse supply chain.

Daniel O'Connor (12:16)
Yeah, mean, it's key. A circular economy is key, right? It is where we have to go, I'm convinced. And so if this can help us get there, that's a huge game changer. And again, it's so is it, it's this physical, could you show us again? Just so, can we take a look at it? So like at a high level, how would it work? it?

Katie Durham (Supra) (12:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel O'Connor (12:40)
water involved, like how does it…

Katie Durham (Supra) (12:42)
Yeah, sure.

So this is a small cartridge, a commercial one would be larger. we can imagine a pipe going through it like this. And let's say we're working with mine tailings. this is a waste stream. It's typically getting landfilled. And we're going to divert it into a

these big vats and then pump it through the cartridge. So we're pumping the tailings through this cartridge. And if this is a cobalt cartridge, for example, it's going to actually absorb cobalt. And I can show you some.

photos another time, the cartridge will turn blue when we do this in a black mass type solution because cobalt is a blue element. it's the material itself that it's printed of is sorbent. And so the cartridge in a cobalt cartridge case will completely turn blue as the material passes through. then with sensors, we'll know when it's full. So when the receptors have picked up pretty much their maximum. And then we, this is a bidirectional cartridge. You can see like there's different flows on different sides, but

we would put water, so another pipe would be going vertically through it, and that water would ⁓ release the elements into a like a vinyl collection tank. And the last step we have to do is to remove the water, and then those elements are there in a salt form.

oxide form and those can be reused within manufacturing processes. So yeah, it's bi-directional and very simple and right now we are releasing with water like due to the really brilliant chemistry again, not my invention, but the way we release is through a polarity shift and so it's incredibly clean process.

Daniel O'Connor (14:18)
Wow. And just polarity shift, for operationalize the term.

Katie Durham (Supra) (14:23)
Yeah, so there are different ways that you can attach and release and some of that could be a pH shift and then you might use a harsher acid to have whatever your binding mechanism

is release the ions. And so because we don't rely on an pH shift, which would in many cases require many toxic acids, we are functional with benign solvents. And that is an environmental advantage.

Daniel O'Connor (14:51)
Got it. Fascinating.

Dustin Olsen (14:52)
So with this technology, this process, can you give us a sense of who your target market is? Who's the best candidate for your product, your solution?

Katie Durham (Supra) (15:03)
Yeah, well there's two sides of the platform. So there's the feedstock suppliers that we'll be working with and then there's getting off takes. those.

entities that will be purchasing the minerals and they're both very important to us. Right now we're focused on these feedstock suppliers and they're critical to developing our platform and our technology. So we are very interested in industrial waste and mine tailings right now in particular. That's most of what we're receiving. E-waste is easy enough for us to procure E-waste. I have a bunch in my drawer right here.

So those are the two that we are most interested in engaging with partners with right now to test and receive. And as I mentioned, we're focused on Scandium and Gallium currently. So those, if anyone believes that they have that in their feedstock, we'd love to test it.

Daniel O'Connor (15:56)
And just quick, sorry, Dustin, scandium is a rare earth element. Gallium is not, I believe. I believe it's a critical element, right? And gallium's used, just high level, gallium is used. What are some of the prominent stem conductors?

Katie Durham (Supra) (16:03)
Yeah, it's a critical mineral.

in semiconductors, it's primarily,

vast majority is for semiconductors, yeah, and chips.

Daniel O'Connor (16:16)
Right.

And scandium is more, it's not in the neodymium, I don't think. What do they use in scandium?

Katie Durham (Supra) (16:23)
It's

lightweight, it's used for like high performance lightweight alloys. It's used in fighter jets, it's used in renewable energies, it's used in fuel cells, fuel cell batteries. it's a very high price element as is gallium. And so it's used in like small quantities.

pretty specialized scenarios. With both of these elements, we are optimistic that if we can really drive supply that the pricing will go down, there'll be more use cases for them. There's definitely many technologies that would benefit from using these elements that currently can't afford to because they're so expensive.

Daniel O'Connor (16:58)
100%,

100%.

Dustin Olsen (17:00)
Can you give us an idea of what some of those technologies are that could benefit but aren't using it?

Katie Durham (Supra) (17:05)
Yeah, I think a lot of the renewable energy technologies, like batteries could benefit from these, they're not, know, battery chemistries are always shifting and you have to really optimize around cost. And yeah, I do think like some of these like fuel cell scenarios, like you could use higher quantities, same even in like the fighter jet scenario, it's used in these like, you know.

these defense level aerospace applications, it could also be used in commercial airplanes and it would make them incredibly more energy efficient if they were more lightweight. So that would be a great use case for Scan DM to just be used in commercial airplanes and improve their energy efficiency. Yeah.

Dustin Olsen (17:47)
Interesting, fascinating.

Daniel O'Connor (17:49)
Very interesting. And again, I don't think we get into the details here, but it's more of the concept of economics. All this comes down to economics. And the challenge, of course, is that in this society, we're more market-driven, these prices ebb and flow, and it's hard to, from a recycling perspective, have the economies of scale.

Are you confident without going into any details, but you're feeling good that ⁓ once this technology is propagated, let's just fast forward, imagine you're past the laboratory phase and you're now scaling up. Do you have in your mind a business model that can work, a revenue model?

Katie Durham (Supra) (18:27)
Yeah,

yeah, it's a great question. So I will say that we have not decided on our business model. this is, I can share the ones that we are exploring, they're using this industry. But there's models that are like more lean, like licensing the technology. So you can imagine a world where we license this, anyone can install a system, we give them the know how and then we may

and ship cartridges. So ⁓ as they need replacement cartridges, we would send those out and that could be a very interesting business model for us. think that it would enable us to scale very quickly. There's also business models where we're willing to off take the waste. So we would create a refinery is more of like a typical refinery model where we would take on waste, we bring it to a central location and process that and then sell our end product and be a producer of these.

minerals ourselves. You know, that is the scenario where we're capturing all of the upside of our technology. It's obviously a lot more capital intensive for us as well. So these are kind of like two ends of the spectrum and there are other business models in between. There's toll refining. So we're exploring what makes sense for our business and

Given our early stage and focus on our attack, we haven't decided which path we'll take.

Daniel O'Connor (19:47)
But really fascinating place you're in. I really exciting if you think about it. There's so many options. Obviously, you're still in the lab to some extent. But you're seeing results that are working. And we did an article on you. And we were bullish. mean, this could be really, really something. So in terms of the company and

Katie Durham (Supra) (20:00)
Yeah.

Daniel O'Connor (20:09)
in. Do you have investors yet or is that something that you do?

Katie Durham (Supra) (20:13)
Yeah, we raised our pre-seed round late last year. So yeah, a lot happened in our first six months. We got started over the summer. We licensed the technology from UT, assembled the team of eight scientists, and we raised an oversubscribed $2 million pre-seed round. So that was led by Crucible Capital, their New York City-based venture capital firm. Climate Capital participated, and Portmanteau Ventures.

and UTC fund also participated. we, yeah, we're feeling equipped for the next year and excited to emerge from the lab and we'll move on to raise more money at that point.

Daniel O'Connor (20:52)
And

I'll just comment on that. It's exciting because you have financial partners that get it, they're focused on it, and plus the university. So that's a very nice mix right there for sure.

Katie Durham (Supra) (21:04)
Yeah, thank you.

Daniel O'Connor (21:04)
Dustin? Yes,

for sure.

Dustin Olsen (21:06)
Yeah, tell me one question to where Daniel was headed. What's the vision, say, three to five years from now? Where do you hope Super to be?

Katie Durham (Supra) (21:15)
That's a great question. I hope that we have dozens of systems up and running around the country. And I hope that those are producing high purity critical minerals of all kinds beyond scandium and gallium. And that those are being reused in manufacturing processes in this country. That's the vision that we have.

Dustin Olsen (21:37)
That's awesome. with that and scaling, we've talked a little bit about scaling. We hear a lot throughout the industry that it's not a quick thing. It takes years and years to achieve an economic viability for scaling. Are there any roadblocks that you foresee right now that would prevent you or not maybe prevent, but definitely slow down that progress?

Katie Durham (Supra) (21:58)
It's a great question. think that from the advice that we've received from other startups in this space that might be a little further along.

I think sometimes there have been, you know, unanticipated technical roadblocks, of course, but also sometimes roadblocks ⁓ for committing too early to a business model and not letting the technology actually lead the company to the right place of maximizing its value. And so we're trying to be really cognizant of that and learn from the startups that came before us and focus on our tech, really focus on this real feedstock testing.

so that we can really advance in as focused a way as possible at achieving that vision that we're talking about. want to, if we have a partner where it's a really good fit with this feedstock, we want to really focus on that partner and getting the right system up and running for them and have that start generating revenue. So we really just want to build this in a way that makes sense and…

and from the bottom up, I would say.

Dustin Olsen (23:05)
Fascinating. And I think there's some wisdom in with what you're just saying of kind of let the product guide the business model rather than trying to shoehorn yourself into an area that maybe it a good fit for. So hopefully that proves to be successful over the coming years. Go ahead, Daniel.

Daniel O'Connor (23:29)
Yeah,

Katie Durham (Supra) (23:25)
Yeah, we'll keep you posted.

Daniel O'Connor (23:30)
I was just gonna say it makes there's wisdom there

Katie, I really feel like you're being very methodical in looking at the situation carefully, you know, and looking back what hasn't worked, why, and not being in a rush. I think you're really smart for doing it that way.

Why Supra? Which I think means above. So there's always a story, so we gotta hear it.

Katie Durham (Supra) (23:50)
Yes, right name. Yes.

Yeah,

so the story is that, again, it actually comes back to our tech. So the supramolecular receptors, that's where we get the supra from. And supramolecular are basically, it's a bunch of molecules that are, that's what captures, I think you can also think of it as like a baseball glove that captures the specific element that we're targeting. So it really is going back to the technology and our core binding mechanism. And

We liked kind of the double meaning aspect of it.

Daniel O'Connor (24:26)
But great name, it makes sense, It makes, you know, it's all coming together, Katie. It's all coming together. It's very exciting. What, you know, as a co-founder, CEO, what keeps you up at night? You know, what do you see as the number one risk where you're at this stage?

Katie Durham (Supra) (24:43)
Yeah, absolutely. It's just, to me, I really think about the speed and I,

This problem is a lot of folks are trying to solve this problem. There's a lot of great innovators out there working on this. And then there's some existing tech that I think our tech is more effective, versatile, cleaner, likely more profitable then, but that is ready today. And so I just think about how quickly we can accelerate this. And I also have to respect that science takes time and I don't want them to ever cut a corner or not get to

better solution to a technical challenge because they're rushing. And so with that, just tell them I don't want money to be the issue. So you can pick, I've heard you can pick two of the three. can be fast, cheap, or Quality, exactly. I'm like, as the CEO, don't let money be the issue.

because I'm responsible for that piece of it and I want it to go as quickly as possible, at high quality as possible, and I will go find the money to keep this funded if we need more money. So that's how I feel.

Daniel O'Connor (25:50)
And that's an awesome answer, seriously. mean, that is, you have to, it has to be quality driven, right? It has to make sense, it has to work. There's the pressure and there's a lot of hyperbole out there that we've got this, we've got that. But you know what? In some ways, Katie, don't let that get to you. Just shut it off, you know, because at the end of the day, you have your trajectory.

Katie Durham (Supra) (26:12)
Exactly. Yeah, thank you. That's good advice.

Daniel O'Connor (26:14)
Yeah,

for sure.

Dustin Olsen (26:16)
So Katie, as we come to the end of our time here, if there is one key takeaway for the listeners here, what would you like them to remember?

Katie Durham (Supra) (26:25)
That's great question. I think I'd just like them to remember that Supra is working on this Critical Minerals Challenge and if there's any way they want to support our efforts or partner with us or if there's any way we can support their efforts, we'd love to hear from them.

Dustin Olsen (26:39)
Perfect. And on that note, where would be a great place for them to go to find you and to reach out?

Katie Durham (Supra) (26:45)
Yeah, our website is getsupra.com, so G-E-T-S-U-P-R-A dot com. And there's a contact form and go straight to my inbox.

Daniel O'Connor (26:58)
.

Dustin Olsen (27:00)
Fantastic. For those who are listening to the show, ⁓ we encourage you to head over to Spotify where you can see the video version of this show where you can see Katie showing off the 3D printed cartridge. It Yeah, there it is again. So head on over to watch the video version. And if you like this episode, give

Daniel O'Connor (27:03)
.

Dustin Olsen (27:18)
it a thumbs up so that it can surface up for other people who might also be interested in this.

If you don't want to miss a future show, please subscribe. Katie, thank you so much for being on the show. And we hope to have you back again just to get an update and see how the progress is gone and if we're on track to achieving some goals.

Katie Durham (Supra) (27:28)
Thank you so much.

Well, thank you so much and I look forward to next time.