Can this nickel-eating plant help solve the battery crisis?

Using plants to get metals out of the ground is known as "phytomining". Decades after it was first developed, green-thumbed entrepreneurs are trying to finally make it a business out of hyperaccumulator plants. Will they succeed?

#PlanetA #Nickel #RareEarths

Credits:
Reporter: Jonas Mayer
Video Editor: Neven Hillebrands
Supervising Editors: Kiyo Dörrer, Adam Baheej Adada
Factcheck: Kirsten Funck
Thumbnail: Em Chabridon

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:51 How does it work?
3:32 This versus conventional mining
5:49 The business case
8:05 Challenges
9:59 What now?

Read more:
The most comprehensive book on phytomining:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.100...

ARPA-E about their phytomining research:
https://arpa-e.energy.gov/news-and-ev...

The first patent on a phytomining process from 1995: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5...

The IEA’s Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025: https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/ass...

The phytoremediation research in Chernobyl:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es98...


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