(763g) an Environmentally Friendly Approach to Recovery of Rare Earth Elements from Coal Production and Utilization Byproducts     

The markets for rare earth elements (REEs) based materials have been steadily increasing. However, how should we meet the increasing demands and where should be get the materials in a both cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner? Coal production and utilization byproducts (CPUB) have been considered to be one of the important REEs resources. However, there are a number of challenges people have to overcome before production of REEs from CPUB can be successfully realized. Wyoming is rich in coal, thus it has a lot of coal byproducts also, including fly ashes. Supported by U.S. DOE, the UW-WVU-RIT team led by Dr. Fan has been developing new pollution-avoidance or pollution-prevention, and cost-effective technologies with enhanced performance and great scalability for recovering high-value REEs from coal ashes with the goal of enriching the REEs from 300 ppm in coal ashes (eventually coal and other coal utilization byproducts) to 2 wt% targeted by DOE. The results achieved by the team to date show that the goal set by DOE has been successfully achieved. In addition, factorial tests are being conducted to minimize the cost and maximize the REEs recovery efficiency of the new REEs extraction processes. The overall progress shows that recovery of REEs from coal fly ashes with the new extraction technology is promising.