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ContactNETL’s work for the DOE Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) Minerals Sustainability Program seeks to ensure a secure domestic supply of critical minerals and materials from secondary and unconventional resources and to extract the full economic value from coal and coal wastes. Using these unconventional resources not only provides an abundant domestic supply of critical minerals and materials and additional uses for coal and coal wastes, but it also will create new jobs and aid in coal waste cleanup efforts — all while supporting the nation’s energy and national security and economic resilience.
This program includes efforts in the areas of Critical Minerals & Materials and Carbon Ore Processing:
The Critical Minerals and Materials (CMM) Program aims to rebuild U.S. leadership in extraction and processing technologies for the production of CMM that include rare earth elements (REE), critical minerals (originally defined by the U.S. Geological Survey [USGS]), and materials deemed critical by DOE, from secondary and unconventional resources to support an economical, environmentally benign, and geopolitically sustainable U.S. domestic supply chain. Via CMM resource characterization efforts, the promising potential of unconventional feedstocks such as coal and coal byproducts, which are abundant domestically, can be understood and realized.
The Carbon Ore Processing Program supports R&D to utilize coal and coal wastes to domestically manufacture products covering the entire value-spectrum, from high volume through high value. Active R&D areas include using coal for synthetic graphite (enabling energy storage and metallurgical applications), building components, carbon fibers, nanomaterials for carbon electronics, and as an additive enhancement for polymers and metals.