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Amazing how nobody who reports on this puts forward any numbers. This Appalachian coal is said to have over 300ppm of rare earth oxides in it. That means for
by mchannon 9y ago
Amazing how nobody who reports on this puts forward any numbers.
This Appalachian coal is said to have over 300ppm of rare earth oxides in it.
That means for every ton of coal, we're talking about 300g of material. Compare conventional rare earth ores, where for every ton, we're talking about 90kg (Mountain Pass).
It's nice and all that these things are in coal, but thermal coal's already on its way out, Appalachian thermal coal especially due to its high cost and high sulfur content, and a couple pennies of rare earths per ton is a worse use of resources than Powder River coal + actual rare earth mining.
- evgen 9y agoHow much ore is available at these conventional rare earth mining sites I wonder? Even with a 30x lower yield it may be that we have 100x more easily mined coal. When it comes to the so-called rare earths my concern is more about the waste from the refining process than the yield. The press release mentioned 'environmentally-conscious' process, but that is the kind of weasel word that covers a variety of sins so I would need hard data.
- tomalpha 9y agoApologies for the nitpick, but I think you mean 300x and 1000x (90000g / 300g). I don’t know whether there’s 1000 times as much coal available as rare-earth ores, but it might skew the argument a little compared to 100x.
- evgen 9y agoYeah, conversion fail on my part. OTOH, I would not be surprised at all if the difference in known deposits was more than 1000x in favour of coal, if only because we have been looking for it for so long. 300-1000x does make process throughout and efficiency a bit harder to match though.
- maxerickson 9y agoOne of the plants they are locating the pilot at can apparently process 950 tons of coal an hour: https://www.tecoenergy.com/news/article/index.cfm?article=202 https://www.tecoenergy.com/news/article/index.cfm?article=20... So if you process it all and get high extraction, a couple million Kg of rare earths a year. (I edited the last paragraph after spotting that I missed a factor in my initial math)
- John_KZ 9y agoThe US already produces and consumes 1 billion metric tons of coal per year. Numbers in Europe are similar. Also all this coal is already cleaned and crushed. That's a lot of mass, even at the low yields, and it's essentially "free" ore. The real limiting factors are throughput and cost of ore processing. If the process can be done economically at the rate of production, it will be implemented. Even if it barely brakes even in terms of finances, it also helps with A) stopping rare earth metals from going airborne (which is a health hazard sometimes) and B) Creating a strategic backup source of rare earth metals and C) Preventing further environmental damage from additional mining for rare earth metals elsewhere.
- throwawayuky 9y agoI'm from the University of Kentucky, and I've been reported on through UKNow before. The reporters are not all that great at getting information about your project, and can contain inaccuracies. I also imagine that, since some of this is patent-pending, they are not willing to divulge much else other than what is described.