The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has identified several rare earth elements (REEs) that are critical to the continued development of clean energy technologies. Unfortunately, the U.S. is entirely dependent of foreign imports of these high-value elements, which have an annual value of nearly $3 billion and generate almost $5 trillion in REE value-added goods and services. Interestingly, the USGS Coal Quality Database indicates that many U.S. coal seams contain elevated levels of REEs. In some cases, these concentrations may be sufficient to justify the future development of this potential high-value resource. In light of this possibility, a field study was undertaken to determine the amounts of REEs currently present in the streams generated by twenty coal processing facilities located in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. Each stream was separated into several size and density classes prior to conducting ash and REE analyses. The data set showed that the run-of-mine feeds from this group of plants contained sufficient REEs to satisfy the annual U.S. consumption of these high-value elements.
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