The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) has announced $32.75 million for 12 projects aimed at advancing cost-effective and environmentally responsible processes to produce and refine critical minerals and materials in the U.S.
The funding, provided by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, focuses on developing value-added products from feedstocks like mining waste streams containing critical minerals and materials.
These projects aim to improve the economic feasibility of domestic production and reduce dependence on foreign supplies.
Agency assistant secretary Brad Crabtree emphasized the importance of building reliable and affordable critical mineral and material supply chains for national defense and low-carbon U.S. energy production, manufacturing, and transport.
The U.S. Geological Survey reports that over 95% of the U.S. demand for rare earth elements is met by foreign sources, with more than 50% of most critical minerals also coming from abroad.
The “Critical Material Innovation, Efficiency, and Alternatives” funding opportunity will provide up to $150 million over several rounds to build a secure, sustainable domestic supply of critical minerals from sources like recycled materials, mine waste, industrial waste, and ore deposits. The 12 selected projects focus on developing products from waste streams containing critical minerals and materials.
The following 12 projects selected for negotiation fall under the “Value Added Products” area of interest, and are focused on developing products created from other materials that are also part of the waste streams from which critical minerals and materials are extracted.
- Ohio University (Athens, Ohio) plans to develop and demonstrate the viability of a novel continuous engineered foaming process to produce value-added carbon building materials from coal and coal waste containing critical minerals and materials.
- Loukus Technologies, Inc. (Calumet, Mich.) aims to establish a semi-continuous process for conversion of cerium oxide with low-value scrap aluminum machining chips to produce advanced aluminum-cerium alloys.
- Trustees of the Colorado School of Mines (Golden, Colo.) plans to develop bench-scale continuous processes to produce building materials, specifically geopolymer bricks, lightweight aggregates, and ceramic tiles, from critical minerals and materials found in mine tailings.
- Still Bright, Inc. (Newark, N.J.) seeks develop a novel electrochemical technology to extract metal co-products from copper concentrate.
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, Calif.) will develop a domestic supply of lithium while co-producing up to 10 other critical and valuable metals, graphite, and Portland cement.
- University of Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah) will establish a process to demonstrate co-production of lithium salt, potassium salt, and magnesium salt from Great Salt Lakes brine.
- National Energy Technology Laboratory (Albany, Ore.) will define optimum parameters for chromite concentration and the extraction of platinum group elements needed to enable green hydrogen production.
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, Tenn.) will repurpose end-of-life graphite recycled from spent lithium-ion batteries into value-added graphitic materials using innovative purification and treatment methods.
- National Energy Technology Laboratory (Albany, Ore.) will design the process of melting electrodes by electric resistance heating of slag—a by-product of the smelting process in metal extraction and refining—which contains rare earth elements in the form of oxides and/or fluorides.
- Airtronics, LLC (Tucson, Ariz.) will develop efficient recycling technologies to recover critical materials, precious metals, and base metals within electronic waste.
- Mexichem Fluor Inc. (St. Gabriel, La.) will demonstrate the feasibility of an efficient and sustainable process for graphite anode active material production from both graphite waste from battery recycling and mined graphite flake.
- Melt Technologies LP (Briggs, Texas) will implement a pilot facility to produce tungsten carbide products — essential for many U.S. industries — from feedstock with greater efficiency and lower cost.
A detailed list of the selected projects and funding amounts can be found here. DOE plans to make additional selections under the FOA’s remaining areas of interest at a later date.
Source: doe.gov