If you feel like you’re hearing the words “rare earth elements” (REEs) or “rare earth metals” with increasing frequency, there’s a reason for it. REEs are essential to building electronics, making them more precious than gold in our tech-fueled society. And they can be found in the acid mine drainage that has long polluted West Virginia’s waterways.
REEs are a family of elements that are key components in DVDs, cell phones, catalytic converters, magnets and fluorescent lighting, among other things, according to Geoscience News and Information. They are also an essential ingredient in rechargeable batteries — including the ones in electric cars.
Despite their name, REEs are abundant in the earth’s crust. However, they often don’t occur in large enough concentrations to make mining them worthwhile; when they do, the mining process is expensive, intensive and results in mildly radioactive byproducts. But REEs also occur in coal and other mining byproducts, such as AMD, and a team at WVU figured out how to extract the rare metals from polluted water.
Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of WVU’s Water Research Institute, and his team started the project in 2016 with a pilot plant in Mount Storm, Grant County, and the project has only grown in scale and success from there.
Ziemkiewicz’s team was recently awarded $3 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Defense and $8 million from the Department of Energy. The funding from the DOD will allow the project to expand to two more coal mines in West Virginia and a copper mine in Butte, Mont., to collect more feedstock (REEs extracted from AMD-contaminated waters), while the DOE award will allow the WVU research team to undertake a study to design and evaluate the economics of a full-scale central refinery to produce REE products using the rare earth elements extracted from acid mine drainage.
For the last several decades, China has dominated REE production and distribution, putting it squarely in charge of the supply chain. In the last few years, China’s share of the global REE production has declined as other countries, including the U.S., increased their own production, but China is still the world’s preeminent supplier.
With one project, this WVU team has achieved three major successes:
One, creating a way to treat acid mine drainage that is also financially beneficial, which gives economic incentive to treat mines’ wastewater. Plus, no matter who gets the money, we all benefit from cleaner water.
Two, creating a potential revenue source for communities abandoned by extraction industries. If locals can produce revenue through REE production, then they might prevent their community from becoming another boom-town-turned-ghost-town. It may also make these areas attractive to technology companies who want to be close to raw materials, creating the opportunity for a new industry to take root.
And three, elevating America’s place in the technology supply chain. The more REEs can be produced in the U.S., the less U.S. companies have to rely on China not just for the raw ingredients, but for the finished product. This is especially important as we shift toward an increasingly tech-based world and as America makes a push toward electric vehicles.
With one project, WVU’s research team has not only found a financial incentive to treat acid mine drainage — it may have launched a new “green” industry.
