Acid mine drainage (AMD) – a waste byproduct that must be treated – is an inevitable trade-off for the affordable, abundant and reliable power derived from coal mining operations. But AMD now offers potential economic opportunities, thanks to emerging technology being developed in collaboration with NETL to extract rare earth elements (REEs).

In the middle of the 20th century, the United States became a leading global supplier of rare earth elements (REEs). These valuable materials were used extensively in the manufacture of innovative technologies like color televisions and other high-tech devices of the time. However, U.S. dominance in the rare earth market began to slip near the turn of the 21st century, and now China exports almost all the world’s rare earth elements.

An innovative bench-scale facility established at West Virginia University (WVU) in collaboration with NETL will demonstrate the feasibility of extracting rare earth elements (REEs) from acid coal mine drainage (AMD) to develop a domestic supply of REEs – an effort that will enhance America’s economic growth and national security.

Four rare earth elements (REEs) recovery projects managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) have made significant progress in the development of a domestic supply of REEs from coal and coal by-products by successfully producing REE concentrates.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) has found high rare earth element (REE) concentrations in coal samples taken from the Illinois, Northern Appalachian, Central Appalachian, Rocky Mountain Coal Basins, and the Pennsylvania Anthracite region. These highly concentrated samples are greater than 300 parts per million (ppm).

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) have announced that the University of North Dakota has been awarded a 2-year, $1.5 million contract to sample and characterize U.S. coal-based resources containing high concentrations of rare earth elements (REEs). The university will also perform a round-robin inter-laboratory study on the analytical methods used to measure the concentration of REEs in U.S. coal-based resources.

The Department of Energy today announced nine projects to receive approximately $4 million in cost-shared federal funding to improve the technical, environmental, and economic performance of new and existing technologies that extract, separate, and recover rare earth elements (REEs) from domestic U.S. coal and coal by-products.

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) selected four projects to move on to a second phase of research in their efforts to advance recovery of rare earth elements (REE) from coal and coal byproducts. DOE will invest $17.4 million to develop and test REE recovery systems originally selected and designed under phase 1 of a prior funding opportunity announcement through DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE).