Researchers have initiated operations at a pilot-scale production facility to scale up technology developed by NETL to extract rare earth elements (REEs) from coal fly ash produced by power plants and transform a waste byproduct into a valuable feedstock.

Construction of the pilot plant at the Wyoming Innovation Center near Gillette was completed in mid-January. Testing will demonstrate the economic viability of using NETL’s Targeted Rare Earth Extraction (TREE) process to bolster the domestic supply of REEs needed across multiple sectors of the U.S. economy.

A subset of critical minerals and materials (CMMs), REEs comprise 17 elements from the periodic table and are essential to support national and economic security. Among their many uses, the defense industry needs REEs to build guidance and satellite systems and U.S. companies require them to make high-tech consumer products and electronics, which provides good-paying, manufacturing jobs for American workers.

However, the United States imports nearly all its rare earth demand. Rebuilding a strong domestic supply of REEs is a top priority for the Trump Administration to strengthen the economies of America and its allies and reduce the global influence of adversarial states.

TREE is an environmentally friendly and cost-effective technology to extract REEs and CMMs from a broad range of coal utilization waste streams. The process employs ambient temperatures and pressure, requires almost no material pre-processing and reduces the amounts of acids and organic solvents required to conduct extraction. 

NETL researchers Christina Lopano, Mengling Stuckman and Thomas Tarka invented the TREE process. In earlier testing, the NETL team found the TREE process to effectively extract REEs from Powder River Basin (PRB) coal ash.

A geologic structural basin in northeast Wyoming, the PRB contains the nation’s largest coal mines. According to the Wyoming State Geological Survey, the state’s mines produce approximately 40% of all U.S. coal.

“This collaborative effort undertaken with the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources and Energy Capital Economic Development, a nonprofit corporation in Gillette, will help us validate the TREE process to extract the REEs our country needs from a plentiful domestic resource while finding an important use for a waste byproduct,” Tarka said. “This pilot campaign will ready us for scale-up to the demonstration scale and on-site extraction.”

Davin Bagdonas, a senior research professional at the University of Wyoming Center for Economic Geology Research (CEGR) and project lead from the School of Energy Resources, said PRB coal contains an abundance of REEs, and the combustion process of burning the coal for electricity generation increases the concentrations of REE-CMMs in the resulting fly ash.

“There is an abundance of PRB-sourced coal and subsequent ‘waste’ product all over the country that could be utilized as an incredible resource in a new industry and help address a critical need for a domestic supply of rare earth elements,” Bagdonas said.

“We have a lot of local support for this project, and we are so grateful to all of our partners, the efforts in creating the necessary infrastructure for the testing on local feedstocks, and for NETL and their innovative extraction technologies,” said CEGR Director Fred McLaughlin.

NETL is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory dedicated to advancing the nation's energy future by creating innovative solutions that strengthen the security, affordability and reliability of energy systems and natural resources. With laboratories in Albany, Oregon; Morgantown, West Virginia; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, NETL creates advanced energy technologies that support DOE’s mission while fostering collaborations that will lead to a resilient and abundant energy future for the nation.