MORGANTOWN, W.Va. West Virginia University researchers will use $3 million in funding from the Department of Defense to increase the supply of rare earth elements extracted from acid mine drainage across the country.
Director of the Water Research Institute at WVU, Paul Ziemkiewicz, said developing a system for processing the waste produced from mining operations in Appalachia and other sites in the country is an important part of our national security.
“Right now, our defense industries and the Department of Defense import almost all of their rare earth requirements offshore, largely from the People’s Republic of China,” Ziemkiewicz said. “That puts us in a vulnerable position if there’s a disruption in the supply chain.”
WVU and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) currently operate a facility in Mt. Storm that processes about 550 gallons per minute of acid mine drainage. The facility currently produces a few tons of rare earth elements annually.
“We’re recovering a rare earth concentrate and processing it onsite at the Mount Storm facility,” Ziemkiewicz said. “This is a large-scale, pretty much full production facility.”
In the next four to five years, a central processing facility will be established. Ziemkiewicz hopes that facility will be located in West Virginia. That facility, when completed, would be the first in the nation.
As part of this grant, acid mine drainage concentrate from other sites in the region will be evaluated to ensure it is compatible with the process in place. This part of the process is intended to identify potential additional sources for the central processing facility.
“One of the things we need to demonstrate is that we can capture a high-grade concentrate that has commercial value from acid mine drainage treatment units at different scales in different industries,” Ziemkiewicz said.
Ziemkiewicz and his team will also work with the operator of a copper mine in Butte, Montana, Montana Resources. “Hard rock” mining sites generally do not produce significant amounts of high-grade preconcentrate.
“We’ll bring those along with the other concentrates we’re generating and process them back in West Virginia to make sure the feed stocks are of consistent quality and they are compatible with our downstream recovery units,” Ziemkiewicz said.
This effort dovetails with a recent grant of $8 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to design and evaluate the economics of a full-scale refinery to process rare earth elements. If located in West Virginia, the facility would create jobs and a revenue stream for the local operators of acid mine drainage sites.
“You’re looking at hundreds of jobs not only in the gathering and transportation but also in constructing and operating the central refinery that we want to have in West Virginia,” Ziemkiewicz said.