MOUNT STORM, W.Va.– Along a long gravel road, hidden in the hills of West Virginia, is a low-rise building where researchers extract essential elements from an old coal mine that they hope will strengthen the country’s energy future.
They are not extracting the coal that fueled the steel mills and locomotives that helped industrialize America – and this is blamed for contributing to global warming.
Instead, researchers are discovering that the groundwater flowing from this and other abandoned coal mines contains rare earth elements and other valuable metals that are vital to the production of everything from electric vehicle engines to rechargeable batteries for smaller, lighter or more powerful fighters.
The West Virginia University-run pilot project is now part of an increasingly intense global race to develop a secure supply of valuable metals and, with more federal funding, could grow into a commercial-scale enterprise.
“The greatest irony is that what created climate change is now a solution, if we’re smart,” said John Quigley, senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The technology being tested at this West Virginia facility could also pioneer a way to clean up large amounts of coal mine drainage that poisons waterways in Appalachia.
The project is one of the federal government’s flagship efforts as it pumps more money than ever into recovering rare earth elements to expand renewable energy and combat climate change reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
For the US, which like the rest of the West is beholden to a Chinese-controlled supply of these valuable metals, the search for rare earth elements is also a national security priority.
Those involved, however, hope their efforts can bring clean energy jobs to dying coal towns and clean up entrenched coal pollution that has persisted for decades.
In Pennsylvania alone, drainage from coal piles and abandoned mines has turned waterways red from iron ore and turquoise from aluminum, claiming lives in more than 5,000 miles of streams. Federal statistics also show that about 470 square miles (about 1,200 square km) of abandoned and unreclaimed coal mines are home to more than 200 million tons of coal waste.
The metals that chemists are working to extract from mine drainage here are lightweight, strongly magnetized and have superior fluorescent and conductive properties.
One of the Department of Energy’s goals is to fund research that proves to private companies that concepts are commercially viable and profitable enough for them to invest their own money.
Hundreds of millions of dollars from President Joe Biden’s 2021 infrastructure law are accelerating the effort.
Department officials hope that by the mid-2030s, this infusion will have spawned full-fledged commercial enterprises.
The two most advanced projects financed by the department are the one in West Virginia, treating mine drainage, and another processing coal extracted by lignite mining in North Dakota.
The former could be an important source of a number of critical metals, such as yttrium, neodymium and gadolinium, used in catalysts and magnets. The latter could be an important source of germanium and gallium, used in semiconductors, LEDs, electrical transmission components, solar panels and electric vehicle engines.
Researchers at each site are designing a commercial-scale operation based on their pilot projects, hoping to secure a huge federal grant for construction.
The alternative would be to develop new mines, disturb more land, obtain licenses, hire workers, build roads and connect power sources, tasks that take years.
“With acid mind drainage, it’s already done for you,” said Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the Water Research Institute at West Virginia University.
Ziemkiewicz started the mine drainage project nearly a decade ago, helped by federal grants. He envisioned it as a way to treat runoff, recover critical minerals and raise money for more mine cleanups in West Virginia.
But the Biden administration’s ambitious funding for clean energy and a domestic supply of essential minerals has expanded that goal.
At the facility, drainage from a former coal mine — now closed and covered by a grassy slope — emerges from two pipes and dumps about 800 gallons per minute into a retention pond.
From there the water is routed through huge indoor pools and a series of large tanks which, with the help of lime to lower the acidity, separate most of the silicate, iron and aluminum. This produces a clear powdery concentrate that contains about 95% rare earth oxides, plus water clean enough to return to a nearby stream.
The Department of Energy is funding coal waste research in several states.
“There are literally billions of tons of coal ash and waste spread across the country. And then, if we can go back and remine them, there are decades of materials there,” said Grant Bromhal, acting director of the Department of Energy’s Mineral Sustainability Division.
Not just coal, but old copper and phosphate mines also have potential, Bromhal said.
The country won’t be able to recover metals from all of them immediately, but the technologies the department is helping to develop could satisfy a substantial portion of the demand over the next 20 to 30 years, Bromhal said.
“So if we get to the tens of percent or 50%, I think that’s possible,” he said.
Other solutions for getting more of these metals are to recover them from discarded devices and shift supplies to friendly nations and away from geopolitical rivals or unstable countries, analysts say. For now, there are only a handful of critical mineral or rare earth mines in the United States, although many more are being proposed.
One final subsidy will be required from the federal government: purchasing the recovered metals at a price that ensures a commercially viable operation, Ziemkiewicz said.
That way, China can’t simply buy the product or use its market dominance to lower prices and drive away private investors, he said.
Quigley, Pennsylvania’s former secretary of environmental protection and former mayor of a small town in coal country, hopes to see a facility like Ziemkiewicz’s come to the tunnel system at the Jeddo mine in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Jeddo has defied decades of efforts to treat its flow, which drains a vast network of abandoned underground mines.
It is a huge source of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, producing about 30,000 to 40,000 gallons per minute.
Bringing Little Nescopeck Creek back to life could put people to work cleaning up the creek and creating recreational opportunities in a newly reactivated waterway, Quigley said.
“This could mean a lot to coal communities, to a lot of people in coal country,” Quigley said. “And for the country.”
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