Tusaar hopes for rare-earth rewards

LAFAYETTE – When he first licensed a patent from the University of Colorado for an organic media that could be attached to carbon and bond to certain types of metals, Gautam Khanna thought he had the makings of a water treatment company.

He certainly wasn’t envisioning the extraction of rare earth metals from waste streams, the application that might soon become the fastest way to profitability for his Lafayette-based startup, Tusaar Corp. And with Tusaar’s product now being tested for its ability to aid in the cleanup of nuclear sites such as Hanford in Washington and Fukushima in Japan, the possibilities…