Regenx Tech Corp. opens Tennessee plant

Regenx Tech Corp., headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta, hosted the grand opening of its first commercial production facility in Greeneville, Tennessee, Oct. 24. The facility, a joint venture in partnership with Davis Recycling Inc., a full-service catalytic converter and scrap metal buyer headquartered in Johnson City, Tennessee, recovers precious metals from diesel catalytic converters using a proprietary clean, environmentally friendly technology, says Greg Pendura, company CEO.

He describes the company as a “technology company focused on the recovery of platinum and other precious metals from end-of-use products."

Getting its start

After selling a mining asset in Spain, Regenx, then known as Mineworx Technology, changed its focus from mining to developing more environmentally friendly technology for the mining industry. The company originally pursued processing e-scrap but ended up in a joint venture that did not work out. However, in the process, Regenx learned how to extract precious metals from end-of-life materials and to fabricate processing facilities.

“We got approached by Davis Recycling in Tennessee 3 ½ years ago,” Pendura says, adding that one of Regenx’s board members had a relationship with the company.

Pendura says Ben Davis, the owner of Davis Recycling, told Regenx about a developing niche market for processing diesel catalytic converters. “Because of the new additives going into diesel catalytic converters, primarily silicon carbide, this was creating real processing issues for smelters,” he says. While the smelters could still process the diesel catalytic converters, they didn’t want to and were shying away from them.

In diesel catalytic converters, the cordierite found in automotive catalytic converters is replaced by a carrier material made primarily of silicon carbide, which reacts differently in the smelting process than cordierite and requires the addition of oxygen to convert the carbide into carbon dioxide and the silicon into silicon oxide to efficiently recover the precious metal.

“So that was the niche,” Pendura says. “We went down that path and we developed the technology. We've got a proprietary chemical technology and a proprietary processing technology.”

After working in the lab and building a pilot-scale facility in Vancouver, Pendura says the partners have finally crossed the goal line.

Taking a modular approach

Regenx’s technology is modular. The first module at the Greeneville plant has been built and commissioned and is gearing up for commercial production, Pendura says.

Greeneville was selected for the plant because Davis has a large facility nearby in Johnson City. The 30,000-square-foot facility will easily house four modules, he says, adding that Regenx wants to get them built and installed quickly. Each module will be able to process 2 ½ tons per day. First, however, the company wants to ensure the first module is achieving the recoveries and efficiencies that have been realized at the pilot plant. “At that point in time, procurement will begin for modules two, three and beyond,” Pendura says.

Playing to their strengths

Pendura says Davis Recycling brings supply chain management expertise to the table. “They're involved, obviously, in procurement [and] pricing inventory," he adds. "They process the catalytic converter into a powder material, which in the old days would have gone to a smelter. Now, it comes to us.”

Having Davis Recycling address supply chain management dramatically reduces its risk profile as a company, Pendura says, adding, "All that we have to do is do what we do well, which is recover the precious metals from that powder.”

It takes approximately nine months from when procurement begins to go through the commissioning stage and into full production with a module. “We can build one module at a time or two or three," he says. "So, because of that, our expansion and growth can be quite aggressive as long as we have the personnel and the human infrastructure to expand the business properly.”

The plant will be able to process 10 metric tons per day when all four modules are installed and operating. “With that, we anticipate annual revenues to be approximately $100 million U.S. per year, and with very attractive margins associated with that," Pendura says.

From powder to product

When the powder recovered by Davis Recycling is delivered to the Greeneville site, it first goes into the chemical phase of Regenx’s system. “It's soaked [and] it's leached," Pendura says. "The whole idea there is to extract the precious metals from the powder and suspend them in solution."

The next step is the “tricky part,” he says, noting the precious metals that are suspended in the solution need to be removed and returned to solid form. “That's the process part of it. And we are able to, at the end of that, have a very high-grade concentrate of 80 percent precious metals, which, at this point in time, we will send to a refiner to upgrade it to 99.99 percent.”

Of the 10 metric tons of material Regenx will be able to process daily once all four modules are installed and running, the company expects to recover approximately 20 pounds of precious metals, he says. Pendura says the material that remains is inert. “But, rather than putting that into a landfill … it'll be used in infrastructure materials, whereby there'll be basically zero environmental footprint from what we're doing.”

He adds of the Regenx technology, “There's no air pollution [or] water pollution. We'll be involved in the carbon credit world as we start our business—that'll be a secondary revenue source for us.”

Planning for expansion

Regenx has a 55 percent ownership stake in the joint venture, while Davis Recycling has a 45 percent stake.  “We’ve given [Davis] the right of first refusal to expand to other plants in the U.S.”

He says Regenx will build and operate the plants planned for the U.S. and Canada, but for installations outside the U.S., the company will license its technology, likely to a global company that already is involved in the space and has facilities in multiple countries.

When research and development are figured in, Pendura says Regenex likely has invested nearly $10 million into its first module. “But a four-module facility will cost approximately $8 million U.S. for the four modules.”

In terms of expansion, he says the company likely will take a regional approach. “We don't need 10 or 15 places throughout the U.S. or Canada. We can have appropriate regional spots. Obviously, we've got the East with Tennessee fairly well-handled. For the West, it would be someplace in the area of let’s say Nevada or someplace like that. Now, we can have other facilities, obviously, so the question will be is it more efficient to expand to six, seven, eight modules, or is it better to have an additional plant someplace? That will be determined.”