Never in a million years saw that coming, but it's true. It is absolutely true.
Narration: Mining engineer Jack Groppo is talking about the surprising fact that the future of renewable
energy—like wind turbines and solar panels—relies on rare earth elements in coal. That's where
the rare earth elements are and they need those for those technologies. So once again,
we see that the coal is the tangible compatible partner not only in the load distribution
for generation as a fuel resource, but actually providing the raw materials to generate the
technology in the first place. China has a virtual monopoly on the world's supply of
rare earth elements. It's an opportunity for growth. It's a necessity for security. If
you're going to have something that’s going to be very vital to all sort of industries,
not just the consumer-based electronics industries, but the defense-based industries. It's important
to have some control over the means of production. It's fine for us to buy our cellphones from
China, but it's different for defense technology. It becomes of strategic importance. Jim Hower
was actually the one that gets credit for the first journal reference to it. Back in
the early 1990’s, Courtland Eble with the Kentucky Geological Survey and I did a lot
of sampling in the Fire Clay coalbed in Eastern Kentucky, which turns out to be really the
premier coal-based resource for rare earth elements. About 2010 or so, it started to
become more critical and U.S. agencies like Defense and Energy started to take particular
interest in making sure that the U.S. had more of a basic supply and more manufacturing
and processing based in the U.S., rather than relying solely on imports. The type of information
that we had gathered over the years became very important to mesh with this new interest.
Narration: With funds from DOE, DOD and NSF, Jim Hower and Jack Groppo are locating and
evaluating rare earth elements and processing coal-based materials, alongside industry and
university partners. I think potentially the best resource is probably in the fly ash and
other coal-combustion products, because the coal has already been burned. It's already
been mined. It's in a fine state. Fly ash is the residual material left over after burning
coal. We produce 140 million tons a year in the United States and we utilize about half
of it. It's actually quite usable in construction products, particularly concrete. So we began
a series of projects back in the mid-1990’s to process the fly ash. It was a very steep
learning curve at first because we don't have any specific experience in rare earth elements.
But you know, as a mining and mineral processing engineer, we process minerals. We remove contaminants
to very small levels using physical processes. It's directly applicable to what we're trying
to do to enrich the rare earth elements to eventually recover them. It's no different
than a gold ore or a copper ore, except that it may potentially be more valuable. The question
is, “Can this be done continuously?” Yes, it certainly can. “Can it be done economically?”
Well, that depends. It all depends on what is there and what the market price is for
those elements. We're dealing with materials that you sell by the kilo, not by the ton
or by the gram. They're not commonly found sitting there associated with an ore, which
is easy to recover. That's what makes them so valuable. I don't think it would ever make
any sense to go after just rare earth elements. That doesn't make any sense economically,
but if you can go after the rare earth elements as a by-product of going after something else,
that makes sense. And again, that's sustainable. Our job here is to find the resource, process
the resource, generate ten tons of processed fly ash - which we do in our pilot plant - ship
it to our partner - they will do the leeching and the solvent extraction - and when they're
done with the material, send the leeched residue back to us, and then we will evaluate it for
its applicability for use in concrete. If you're really lucky in your career, you may
have one opportunity to see something from the idea stage through commercialization.
Maybe because I'm working in an area that nobody else wants to work - dealing with other
waste - I've had the chance to do that five or six times, which is tremendous. It's a
tremendous opportunity and I think we have another chance here for the dual purpose of
actually recovering important elements, and then utilizing a waste stream in a value-added
way instead of throwing it away or going to recycle it. Because when you extract the rare
earth elements from fly ash, give the fly ash back to us, and we will use it to make
concrete. So there's no waste from this process if we do this right. And sustainability and
mining don't normally go hand in hand, this is a great opportunity to actually do that.