Washington — The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) and DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) issued a notice of intent (NOI) to fund a Bipartisan Infrastructure Law program that will focus on developing advanced concepts to lower the costs of producing rare earth elements and critical minerals and materials from domestic coal-based resources.

As part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $16 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to bring critical mineral supply chains to America and reduce reliance on competitors like China.

Editor’s note: In 2021, NETL awarded nearly $1 million to six recipients for project development under funding opportunity announcement (FOA) 2404, Advanced Processing of Rare Earth Elements and Critical Minerals for Industrial and Manufacturing Applications. This is the second article highlighting these projects. Each article reviews three projects.

As demand for rare earth elements (REEs) and critical minerals (CMs) increases, research completed with NETL support and oversight has advanced the development of a lightweight tool that can be carried into the field to measure concentrations of these valuable materials in coal wastes and byproducts.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) today announced $5.3 million in funding for five cutting-edge projects that will advance research supporting the domestic production of rare earth elements and other critical minerals.

NETL selected six projects last year to receive a total of nearly $1 million to create a sustainable supply chain of critical minerals (CMs), including rare earth elements (REEs), which are crucial to the development of clean energy and national defense technologies. These projects have since made great strides toward their objectives, including drafting a report to provide insights into consumption and price data, characterizing midstream REE concentrates, and conducting a value analysis to determine the recoverable value of REEs from acid mine drainage (AMD).

NETL’s Christina Lopano, Ph.D., will participate in a webinar Tuesday, Oct. 11, from 2-3 p.m. ET, highlighting important NETL-led rare earth element (REE) research at the Wyoming Innovation Center (WyIC) in Gillette, Wyoming. Lopano will join experts from government and academia for a panel to discuss the creation of the WyIC, current and upcoming projects and the impact the Center’s work will have on emerging market opportunities and innovative methods to use domestic coal resources in the growing clean energy economy.

Through developing robust domestic sources of critical materials (CMs), including rare earth elements (REEs), America’s historic energy producing regions, such as the Powder River Basin and others, have a unique opportunity to solve one of the nation’s greatest resource challenges and benefit their workers in the process.

NETL is leading a charge to develop the nation’s critical mineral (CM) supply chains with an approach that simultaneously helps disadvantaged communities become critical contributors in the nation’s low-carbon energy future.

U.S.  Department of Defense (DOD) progress on a $4 million plan to pursue a technology for recovering rare earth elements (REEs) and other critical minerals from coal ash, has its roots in a ground-breaking project spearheaded by NETL and private partner – Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI). The DOD’s action is an example of how NETL leverages cooperative partnerships for technology development in the public and private sectors.