Rare Earth Extraction from Coal Fly Ash

Rare earth metals are valued for their unique magnetic, optical and catalyst properties- These materials are used in many clean energy technologies including wind turbines, electric vehicles, photovoltaic thin films and fluorescent lighting- Coal and coal ash are potentially economical sources of REE and many studies of REE concentrations in these materials have been reported- In both mining and recycling applications, new separation and recovery technologies are sought to enable more rapid, flexible, efficient, environmentally-friendly extraction and separations of individual lanthanides frommixtures with the goal ofincreasing the domestic supply of rare earth elements, and decreasing the costs of processing high purity metals- The proposed Phase I SBIR/STTR will demonstrate a transformative electrochemical method for extracting and separating rare earth metals from coal fly ash-