SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the I-can-pull-Rare-Earth-from-my-album-collection dept.
Rare earth elements could be pulled from coal waste:
In Appalachia's coal country, researchers envision turning toxic waste into treasure. The pollution left behind by abandoned mines is an untapped source of rare earth elements.
Rare earths are a valuable set of 17 elements needed to make everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to fluorescent bulbs and lasers. With global demand skyrocketing and China having a near-monopoly on rare earth production — the United States has only one active mine — there's a lot of interest in finding alternative sources, such as ramping up recycling.
Pulling rare earths from coal waste offers a two-for-one deal: By retrieving the metals, you also help clean up the pollution.
Long after a coal mine closes, it can leave a dirty legacy. When some of the rock left over from mining is exposed to air and water, sulfuric acid forms and pulls heavy metals from the rock. This acidic soup can pollute waterways and harm wildlife.
Recovering rare earths from what's called acid mine drainage won't single-handedly satisfy rising demand for the metals, acknowledges Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute in Morgantown. But he points to several benefits.
Unlike ore dug from typical rare earth mines, the drainage is rich with the most-needed rare earth elements. Plus, extraction from acid mine drainage also doesn't generate the radioactive waste that's typically a by-product of rare earth mines, which often contain uranium and thorium alongside the rare earths. And from a practical standpoint, existing facilities to treat acid mine drainage could be used to collect the rare earths for processing. "Theoretically, you could start producing tomorrow," Ziemkiewicz says.
From a few hundred sites already treating acid mine drainage, nearly 600 metric tons of rare earth elements and cobalt — another in-demand metal — could be produced annually, Ziemkiewicz and colleagues estimate.
Related: Sweden Finds Largest-Ever Rare Earth Metal Deposit In Europe
(Score: 5, Interesting) by higuita on Tuesday January 24 2023, @12:54AM
No knowing exactly the process, but reading the article it seems that it is mostly water treatment... so lots cheaper than digging a whole mountain, breaking the rock, dissolve it and wash it and reach the same spot, a a water with "high" level of rare earth elements
After this, you will try to concentrate it more and add chemicals to precipitate ( reaction to create a new compost that isn't soluble in water and drops down from water) each element, in a way to isolate each of the needed ending elements. still lot of chemicals and possible energy, but this is shared by both.
Notice that you get a few grams of rare earth elements for each tonne of rock, so a huge mining and rock break down operation.
So if this is true, you basically can save LOT of cost of mining and have just pumps to get water out from mines. This is one of the reason why china is the major producer, mining is expensive and destroying a mountain have environmental cost and local population opposition. China can use their very cheap labor and have mostly no environmental worries and almost no local opposition for the "nation important projects". That is also why you get some important elements from africa (like cobalt) and remote locations (like lithium from remote parts of Chile), both mostly cheap labor, no opposition and many times, weak environmental worries)
There are many places with rare earth components, but having that cost effective is hard, add environmental safe and it gets much harder.
This may really help, as long as the output water is not much worse than the input water