American Resources Corp (NASDAQ:AREC) announced that it has been selected by the US Department of Energy (DOE) for award negotiations under a funding program aimed at expanding domestic capacity to recover rare earth elements and other critical materials from coal-based…
dustrial byproducts. The company is one of five organizations selected under the DOE’s Topic Area 1: Mines & Metals Pilots – Coal-Based Industry initiative
The program is intended to support pilot-scale facilities that recover rare earth elements and other critical materials from coal and coal-based feedstocks at domestic industrial sites. American Resources said it will lead a consortium that will evaluate an integrated processing strategy for recovering and producing rare earth elements and other critical materials from unconventional domestic feedstocks, including coal-based byproducts. ReElement Technologies, in which American Resources holds a minority ownership interest, is part of the consortium and is expected to provide its refining and separation technology for the project.
According to the company, the project will assess how existing high-technology-readiness-level processing technologies can be integrated to concentrate, condition and prepare coal-based feedstocks for downstream separation and purification. The initiative will focus on developing front-end processing pathways capable of producing feedstock suitable for advanced refining technologies, including ReElement’s chromatographic separation platform. “The challenge is not simply identifying where critical minerals occur. The challenge is establishing an economically viable process flow that can efficiently recover, concentrate, separate and refine those elements into marketable products,” American Resources CEO Mark Jensen said in a statement.