NETL Opportunities to Develop High Performance, Economically Viable, and Environmentally Benign Technologies to Recover Rare Earth Elements (REEs) from Domestic Coal and Coal By-products

Funding is available through the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) for research and development focused on innovative midstream processing technologies for purification, separation and reduction of high purity rare earth elements and other critical minerals from coal, coal by-products or alternate non-coal based feedstock materials. These processes are required to be commercially viable and environmentally benign.

The NETL has granted over $20 million in funding for this line of research following a 2017 DOE report that established (1) the existence of significant potential reserves of rare earth elements in coal and coal by-products and (2) the existence of technical challenges of extracting these mixed rare earth oxides while minimising the environmental impact. 

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