Concord University will be one of two places in the world to have a certain type of X-ray diffracting crystal. The manufactured crystal is capable of capturing invisible light wavelengths, known as X-rays, to determine the chemical makeup of certain materials.
This crystal is used as part of an electron microscope, and can collect information from materials at sizes as small as 1/1000th of a millimeter — to put that in perspective, a fine grain of sand is 1/10th of a millimeter.
Concord University will be one of two places in the world to have a certain type of X-ray diffracting crystal. The manufactured crystal is capable of capturing invisible light wavelengths, known as X-rays, to determine the chemical makeup of certain materials.
This crystal is used as part of an electron microscope, and can collect information from materials at sizes as small as 1/1000th of a millimeter — to put that in perspective, a fine grain of sand is 1/10th of a millimeter.
Concord officials said this is the first of several federally-funded upgrades to Concord’s lab and a key step to the development of Concord Materials and Rare Earth Element Analysis Center.
Stephen Kuen, associate professor of Geology and Earth Science and director CU Electron Microprobe Laboratory, is managing this project. Kuen said that often the rays of light given off by different materials mix, and become muddled so that it’s hard to determine the different chemical components.
“So this crystal is able to better separate those X-rays so that we can get much better measurements of the individual elements,” Kuen said. “And that also helps to better detect things that are present at very, very low concentrations.”
Kuen said this technology could be useful to industries that depend on sourcing rare earth elements.
“People are looking to develop sources of those elements,” Kuen said. “If we’re able to measure them better and source materials, that can help people looking for for those [materials]”
Students at Concord will be the major users of this technology and will have learning experiences that they won’t be able to get anywhere else, according to Concord officials.
The project to develop these instruments as part of a new lab at the university cost just under $1 million, most of which was federally earmarked funds allotted to this project.
Kuen said funding was the biggest challenge in procuring this instrument and in adding to Concord’s scientific facilities.
“We were just delighted,” Keon said. “I think, when this most recent attempt at funding went somewhere, and went somewhere in a big way, it’s really opening a lot of doors and unlocking a lot of possibilities.”
A company is making a big financial investment to find new uses for the state’s coal mining waste.
A company is making a big financial investment to find new uses for the state’s coal mining waste.
Gov. Jim Justice was in Wyoming County Thursday afternoon to announce Omnis Sublimation Recovery Technologies will invest $60 million in the county to extract rare earth metals from coal waste impoundments.
“We’ve given our sweat, our lives and every single thing we have to produce the coal that we’ve produced and the waste bears these rare earth metals,” Justice said.
Rare earth metals are relatively abundant and are used in many modern electronics, most notably smartphones, but their extraction and refinement is technically difficult and traditionally environmentally damaging.
Justice said Omnis’ new technology will allow for safer extraction.
“The problem is we’ve never been able to find a way to extract them that was environmentally sound and on and on,” Justice said.
Omnis claims their technology can extract pure metals from coal impoundment mineral waste using ultra-high heat without acids or harmful chemicals. The technology recovers 100 percent of the metals, including all critical, strategic, and rare earth metals, with zero waste and no harmful emissions.
China currently produces more than 80 percent of the world’s rare earth metals.
As part of his infrastructure plan, President Joe Biden has prioritized creating a domestic supply chain for rare earth metals.
Omnis has committed to hiring and training 100 team members to operate this technology in a safe, clean environment in the state.
A pilot-scale facility that extracts valuable rare earth elements from coal waste byproducts officially opened its doors this week at West Virginia University.
Advocates of the project are hopeful that environmental waste left by Appalachia’s coal mining legacy could one day fuel an economic boom in the region while also providing some national security.
“This could go a long way forward in creating new economic opportunity for West Virginia and this region and treat acid mine drainage, and turn it into a financial boon instead of a financial burden,” Brian Anderson, director of WVU’s Energy Institute told the crowd.
The Rare Earth Extraction Facility located at the National Research Center for Coal and Energy on WVU’s Evansdale campus in Morgantown is a collaboration between the university, the Department of Energy (DOE) and private partners.
The research facility extracts valuable rare earth elements from acid mine drainage (AMD), which is the most abundant pollutant in West Virginia waters. In just West Virginia and Pennsylvania, it’s estimated that about 10,000 miles of streams are polluted by AMD.
17 rare earth elements exist on the planet and they’re used in everything from cellphones to stealth bombers. While ubiquitous in the earth’s crust, they’re called “rare” because they don’t exist anywhere in concentrated amounts. Currently, China dominates the global rare earth elements market.
“Without those rare earth elements, we can’t have energy security, we can’t have financial security, we can’t have defense security,” said Steven Winberg, assistant secretary for fossil energy at the Department of Energy. “That’s how impactful this is.”
Developing a domestic source of rare earth elements is a research priority for the DOE. The agency kicked in much of the funding for the pilot facility and researchers from the National Energy Technology Laboratory have participated in the project.
Still More to Learn
At the pilot plant, sludge from the nearby Omega Mine in Grafton is treated with a series of acidic chemicals. Then, it’s filtered through up to 100 milk carton-sized mixers that quietly whir, no louder than your run-of-the-mill fan. At every stage, the rare earth elements separate out.
Credit Brittany Patterson / WVPB
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WVPB
Two of the mixers at the Rare Earth Extraction Facility at WVU.
What remains is a concentrated amalgamation of a bunch of rare earth elements that will need to be further processed.
Paul Ziemkiewicz is director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute and the lead developer behind this project. He said it’s likely the elements will separate at some degree.
“But we won’t really know until we run this thing,” he said.
The pilot plant aims to iron out the kinks before this process can be scaled up, but if it can be done, Ziemkiewicz believes it could mean an economic windfall for the region. His team estimates Appalachia’s coal sludge could produce up to 800 tons of these elements each year, worth more than $190 million.
He said they hope to be able to scale up the project for commercial use within five years.
Throughout coal mining country of the Eastern U.S. you will find streams that run a peculiar rusty orange. It’s the result of pollution called acid mine drainage, or AMD. It’s estimated that about 10,000 miles of streams are polluted by AMD in Pennsylvania and West Virginia alone. In fact, researchers have calculated that every second, coal mines throughout the region are pumping out about 3,000 cubic feet of AMD. That’s roughly equal to an average May day’s flow of water in the Monongahela River as it winds through the region.
If untreated, the pollution is more than just unsightly. It is deadly to aquatic life. But if some engineers and scientists are successful, some of this pollution could become a boon to national security and the source of a new industry. These researchers think this and other coal pollution can produce rare earth elements, valuable ingredients for electronic technology and the defense sector.
Credit Ohio Valley Mushroom Farm
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Ohio Valley Mushroom Farm
Acid drainage from an Ohio mine.
Researchers have found rare earth elements in and around coal seams and throughout waste products that come from mining and burning coal. The lowest hanging fruit might be the elements being leached from coal seams by acid drainage.
Using Acid Drainage
Standing in front of a silo full of crushed limestone, Paul Ziemkiewicz explained how the basic rock slowly gets flushed into an acidic stream pouring out of an old coal mine. He said this state-of-the-art, state-operated facility is the latest iteration of how to treat acid mine drainage.
If the treatment weren’t here, the stream would run a rusty red, killing ecosystems in its path.
“We are at the Omega Mine, about four and a half miles south of Morgantown, West Virginia, in an area that’s been heavily mined for coal since the Civil War,” Ziemkiewicz said.
This year Ziemkiewicz, the director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute at West Virginia University, was awarded 2.6 million federal dollars, plus funds from the private sector. His research aims to locate, isolate, and commercialize hard-to-gather elements of the periodic table — elements that are critical to the technology age we live in. Some of those elements can be found in acid mine drainage.
“The acid mine drainage production in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and eastern Ohio can supply anywhere between 800 tons per year to maybe 2,200 tons per year of rare earth elements,” he said. “Now 800 tons a year is basically what the military needs for defense purposes.”
Ziemkiewicz and a handful of other scientists in and around the Ohio Valley make up the eastern American team dedicated to cracking the rare earth element puzzle. The team is on the hunt for rare earth elements and ways to build an industry around them. The Americans are underdogs. Right now China is the team to beat, where 95 percent of rare earths used in phones, electric cars, and smart bombs are all sourced.
A Rare Breed
Rare earths are not “rare” so much as rarely concentrated and hard to extract. It usually takes acids and harsh chemical processes to get the elements out of surrounding ore, which can create the stuff of environmental nightmares.
But the eastern coal fields are already coping with environmental nightmares.
“Before the Clean Water Act, the Monongahela River at Morgantown was orange. It was absolutely dead. The only difference between that and now is the amount of treatment that water gets before it winds up in the river,” Ziemkiewicz said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgi7II0u9YE
So acids are literally seeping from coal mines and, apparently, leaching rare earth elements in the process.
Ziemkiewicz’s research is not only identifying which elements exist in acid mine drainage and other mine wastes, such as the sludge left from treatment of polluted water, but also how to process the elements and get them into a marketable form.
“If you could actually make some money on [acid mine drainage processing] — even if it knocks down the costs by 20 to 40 percent — that’s a very very significant incentive to continue treating acid mine drainage.”
Get Ready
“In 2011 the prices of rare earth elements spiked in part because of a supply problem from China,” Tom Tarka said. He’s the technical project lead for rare earth elements at the National Energy and Technology Laboratory, or NETL, in Morgantown. “And so that instilled an interest in researching other sources of rare earth elements throughout the world but also the United States.”
Tarka explained that about 140,000 tons of rare earth elements are processed globally each year into products on the market. To put that into perspective, the U.S. produces about 700,000,000 tons of coal each year.
Credit Mary Meehan / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Steven Roberts reviews a slide in the lab at the Center for Applied Energy Research.
So far there are few if any commercially viable sourcing alternative for rare earth elements outside of China. Since the U.S. doesn’t want to have to rely on any single other nation to provide important components critical to national security, government funds are funneling into research at the facility in Morgantown, a federal Department of Energy national laboratory that focuses largely on coal and fossil fuel research.
“Right now what we have is actively 15 projects that are investigating not only separations, investigating where we can find our best reserves, and how can we take this forward,” said Mary Anne Alvin, the head of rare earths division at NETL.
Rare earth mine companies have tried and failed in the US already. They just weren’t profitable on their own. The hope now is that rare earth mining can be economically viable if it piggybacks on other mining operations such as coal. Researchers have already begun to identify rare earth elements in and around coal seams as well as those within waste products associated with mining and burning coal.
Team Effort
Ziemkiewicz’s mine drainage research is just one of many projects underway. Others in Pennsylvania and Kentucky are studying lots of other coal waste products. James Hower at the University of Kentucky’s Center for Applied Energy Researchinvestigates the possibilities in coal ash, the residue left from burning coal in power plants. There are literally mountains of discarded coal ash throughout the region creating one of the nation’s top waste disposal challenges and sometimes leaking toxic pollution into waterways.
Credit Mary Meehan / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
James Hower at UK’s Center for Applied Energy Research.
Hower says that in order for a rare earths industry to be successful in the region the industry will need to be headquartered in the region that produces the material.
“You don’t want to transport this material too terribly far,” Hower explained, “because you have a lot of material that is not rare earths that you have to then put back somewhere. Ideally we want to be working at source landfills, do initial processing there, and then send more finished products somewhere else for further polishing.”
These scientists estimate that with continued research, a rare earths industry is possible within 10 to 20 years.
This story is part of the Appalachian Innovators series, which is made possible with support from The Benedum Foundation and the Appalachian Regional Commission.
