
Researchers produce nearly-pure rare earth concentrates from coal - vinnyglennon
https://uknow.uky.edu/research/uk-researchers-first-produce-high-grade-rare-earths-coal
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mchannon
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
How 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
Apologies 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
Yeah, 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.

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pjc50
Unanswered questions:

\- what happens to the carbon from this process? Does it end up as atmospheric
CO2?

\- what happens to the energy available from that carbon? Thrown away or used
to run the process?

\- can't you just run this on fly ash?

\- how does this compare to regular mining?

\- what happens to everything else in the coal, such as sulphur and thorium?

~~~
maxerickson
The idea is to insert it into the existing coal consumption pipeline:

[https://uknow.uky.edu/research/honaker-awarded-6-million-
dep...](https://uknow.uky.edu/research/honaker-awarded-6-million-department-
energy-rare-earth-element-recovery-pilot-plant)

It sounds like it is only going to consume byproduct of the washing process.

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topspin
Scandium is mentioned as one of the "rare" earth elements readily recovered
from coal. I can't speak for the viability of this process, but cheap scandium
would be a great outcome. Small amounts of Scandium greatly improves the
tensile strength, fatigue behavior and other properties of Aluminum.

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ClintFix
I was an engineer at a company attempting to extract rare earth metals from
fly ash using a solvent method (supercritical CO2). Similar to how caffeine is
removed from coffee.

There aren’t a lot of rare earths in coal/fly ash but even modest coal plants
produce tons of fly ash daily.

~~~
John_KZ
Also fly ash is a pain in the ass to get rid off. I've heard about companies
re-using it in concrete products and other construction materials. Even if the
value produced is low, any profit is better than dealing with the cost of
safely disposing it.

~~~
Erlangolem
Wouldn’t that make the resulting concrete unusually radioactive?

~~~
John_KZ
No, the idea that fly-ash is highly radioactive is a faux created by the
nuclear lobby. Some coal is more radioactive than other, but in general
they're very safe from this perspective. The real problems are is it's
corrosiveness, it's heavy metal content (if any), and the particle size.

~~~
Erlangolem
I live and learn, thanks. The particle size I assume is an issue for pulmonary
reasons? So sequestered in concrete that wouldn’t be an issue, smart.

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vanderZwan
Waiting for someone to tell point out why this process is super-toxic, or
prone to ruining the environment in some other fashion, or some other bad
news.

Also curious if anyone can to weigh in on how this might affect China's
(supposed) rare earth monopoly, since I presume that was part of the
motivation behind the research. Same thing for the coal industry in general.

~~~
reacweb
IMHO, the future is solar energy and storage. If coal wants to remain
significant in long term, it has to find arguments.

~~~
pjc50
Coal is not conscious, it cannot want.

The coal _industry_ may want, but like everyone else they're not guaranteed
relevance in the long term. Going out of business is capitalism's way of
saying your product is no longer required.

~~~
vanderZwan
> _Coal is not conscious, it cannot want._

This is pedantic to the point of wilfully not wanting to understand that the
coal industry is implied with that statement. But if we're going down the
pedantic route:

> _Going out of business is capitalism 's way of saying your product is no
> longer required._

 _Demand_ and _need_ are correlated, but not the same. Capitalism works with
the former, and also has an entire industry devoted to creating demand when
there is no need. I'm not saying capitalism is bad - it is an amoral system
and a very effective tool for a lot of things. By itself self-regulates only
to the vested interests of the people wielding the tools within the capitalist
system, and this does not have to align with societal or planetary needs.

~~~
d0lph
Capitalism exclusively aligns with societal needs, if society does not need or
want something we don't buy it, the business evolves or goes bankrupt.
Capitalism is not just amoral, but also is democratic in nature.

~~~
OrganicMSG
If society does not need or want something, there is an entire industry
devoted to convincing society otherwise, that uses psychological and social
modelling on vast and detailed databases of the targeted population.

Democratic systems these days are not followed, they are moulded.

~~~
d0lph
Really, because I thought there was debate of whether or not advertising
actually works, especially online advertising.

However, at the end of the day it won't matter. Advertising is available to
all companies, we end up with a tug of war over peoples attentions, which will
probably result in advertising becoming ineffective.

~~~
dpark
> _Really, because I thought there was debate of whether or not advertising
> actually works, especially online advertising._

No, there is no debate. No one seriously argues that companies pour half a
trillion dollars into advertising that doesn't work.

> _However, at the end of the day it won 't matter. Advertising is available
> to all companies, we end up with a tug of war over peoples attentions, which
> will probably result in advertising becoming ineffective._

It does matter. If the tug of war is between two companies that want you to
buy their version of X, there is still no one advertising that you should
_not_ buy X at all. This is known as growing the market. Demand is still
created in this case.

~~~
d0lph
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/04/28/researc...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/04/28/research-
shows-millennials-dont-respond-to-ads/#2fc4bf785dcb)

It's at least not a new thought. Mostly though I'm skeptical that advertising
is subverting capitalism.

Is demand created though? How do you know that some people weren't just
unaware of the product before, and would have gladly bought it had they known
of it.

Because not buying something is the easiest, and default position.

~~~
dpark
That article has very little concrete info in it, but the core is not that
advertising doesn't work but that advertising to millennials effectively
requires updated approaches. I certainly would not say that advertising
"subverts" capitalism. Advertising is part of capitalism. It always has been.
You can't get your wagon repaired if you don't know where the wagon repair
shop is.

Advertising is also part of the capitalism chain. Companies demand
advertising, so it exists.

> _Is demand created though? How do you know that some people weren 't just
> unaware of the product before, and would have gladly bought it had they
> known of it._

You're describing creating demand. Someone didn't want something because they
didn't know it existed. Now they want it. This is the most effective
advertising possible.

> _Because not buying something is the easiest, and default position._

Ok? If you exit the default position because you saw an ad, the ad worked.

~~~
d0lph
> Advertising is part of capitalism.

Because the core principles of Capitalism could function without advertising,
I think this is incorrect.

The main point I was trying to make was that advertising does not remove the
inherent Democratic component of Capitalism.

> You're describing creating demand. Someone didn't want something because
> they didn't know it existed. Now they want it. This is the most effective
> advertising possible.

The advertiser didn't really create the demand though, it existed before them?

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ttul
What national defense application is yttrium used for?

~~~
evgen
Yttrium barium copper oxide is a class of materials that exhibit
superconductivity at (relative) high temperatures. This has a lot of
applications and some of them are defense-related.

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Firerouge
I do hope coal companies come to realize coal is worth far more in valuable
rare earth elements than burning it. Maybe then they'll stop pushing their
coal fueled pipe dreams.

~~~
dmurray
Unfortunately for your hopes, it looks like the goal of this process is to be
able extract rare earths from the coal and still burn the carbon. That would
make coal more viable as a fuel, rather than less.

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wrycoder
I’m wondering why rare earths end up in coal in the first place.

~~~
mchannon
Coal (at least most of the time) comes from decaying plants.

Before the plants decayed, they pulled up all manner of minerals from soil.
Rare earths behave similarly to iron, so if a plant can uptake iron from its
soil (it can) then so can it uptake rare earths.

There are numerous instances of field reclamation from mercury contamination
specifically by use of plants to leach the mercury from the soil, then
harvest, burn, and safely dispose of the mercury concentrate.

[https://www.fastcompany.com/3033295/cleaning-up-polluting-
mi...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3033295/cleaning-up-polluting-mines-with-
plants-plants-that-then-turn-into-precious-metals)

Same story as this except the latter occurs in a human lifetime, and we want
the mercury out of the soil for fundamentally different reasons.

~~~
wrycoder
Very interesting, thanks!

