Ever thought flowers could fuel your ride? 🤯 In Albania, a special plant called Odontarrhena chalcidica is turning toxic soils into nickel-rich gold for electric vehicle batteries.
These soils, covering about 11% of the country, are usually too harsh for any crops. But this “hyperaccumulator” has a superpower: it soaks up metals like nickel through its roots and stores them in its leaves and stems. Harvest the plants, burn them, and you get nickel straight from the ash—no giant diggers or energy-sucking processing plants needed.
This technique is known as phytomining (or agromining). It’s way more energy-efficient than traditional mining and gives a bonus: it cleans up contaminated land, making it usable again for future farming. 🌱
Research guru Professor Aida Bani at the Agricultural University of Tirana has spent over a decade studying these metal-hungry plants. Now, a local start-up called MetalPlant is scaling it up across seven hectares in Tropoja.
They’re even boosting the process with “enhanced rock weathering”: crushed olivine rock is spread on the fields, pumping up nickel uptake in the plants while trapping CO₂ as stable carbonates. Talk about a double win—cleaner nickel production and carbon removal!
If all goes well, Albania could lead a green mining revolution where flowers, not giant machines, power our electric future. 🔋🌸
Reference(s):
RAZOR: A sustainable approach to mining fueled by flower power
cgtn.com
