Right now the US is almost entirely dependent on China for rare-earth minerals, but according to researchers at UT Austin, there's about $8.5B worth of those elements mixed up in US coal ash. news.utexas.edu/2024/11/19/e... - ThreadSky

volts.wtf • 107 days ago

Right now the US is almost entirely dependent on China for rare-earth minerals, but according to researchers at UT Austin, there's about $8.5B worth of those elements mixed up in US coal ash. https://news.utexas.edu/2024/11/19/enormous-cache-of-rare-earth-elements-hidden-inside-coal-ash-waste/

Comments

ldrberi.bsky.social•107 days ago

Heyyyy….isnt that something Boston Metals and their electrolyzer was capable of handling?

jvoris.bsky.social•106 days ago

Evergreen

ostaley.bsky.social•107 days ago

What will be the health/ environmental implications of excavating and processing that coal ash?

refinedplat.bsky.social•107 days ago

If anything, it'll likely make the remaining ash less toxic. It already regularly leaches into waterways because of haphazard "sealing" methods.

ostaley.bsky.social•107 days ago

I guess this assumes the refining process won’t be equally haphazard

refinedplat.bsky.social•107 days ago

Yeah the real solution is to not burn so much coal to begin with

andre-sobolewski.bsky.social•107 days ago

My buddy Paul Ziemkiewicz has worked on this for a few years. It's a messy kinda process that involves acid extractions, but there might be ways to do it with a minimum of impacts.

hawkeyeinexile.bsky.social•107 days ago

Does this sound like a ploy to keep the coal industry alive to anyone else?

refinedplat.bsky.social•107 days ago

Unlikely, we also have an obscene amount of lithium etc in US soils that can easily be mined at less cost than mining coal to turn into ash to extract rare metals.
That said if we dumped a boatload of money into renewables whilst building those mines and shutting down coal, that's net fewer mines.

hawkeyeinexile.bsky.social•107 days ago

Finding a use for existing waste products is all well and good as long as no one uses that as an excuse to perpetuate a dying industry, especially when, like you said, rare earths are probably better acquired elsewhere.

volts.wtf•107 days ago

Oh there is *plenty* of existing coal ash, sitting in shitty ponds all over the south. No need to make more.

gspeng.bsky.social•106 days ago

Mining waste for valuable materials is a solid plan. Pun intended

indiffidably.bsky.social•106 days ago

There are plenty of parking lots around Lake Norman above Charlotte, NC where it was used as backfill, which certainly hasn’t led to any concerns with ongoing health issues.

thudhead.bsky.social•107 days ago

Coal is likely to become a great feedstock for manufacturing. Graphene is likely to be most economically made from coal. There may be a time when we stop referring to hydrocarbons as fossil fuels.

pouic.bsky.social•107 days ago

Ok, let's all agree to give this extraction process a new name, I'm going with Coal-Ash Knick-off ...

Oh!? Wait...

dirk11w.bsky.social•92 days ago

Also: Discovery in 2023 of gigantic deposit of REM's in Wyoming means that the US can become the world's largest supplier.

hoodiecraw.bsky.social•107 days ago

And more!
Coal ash is full of interesting elements...

akmagee.bsky.social•103 days ago

Good. Leave treaty-protected tribal lands & resources alone. Dig around in your old piles of nasty. #noGreenwashing

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