The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory has awarded nearly $1 million to Rick Honaker, professor and chair of the University of Kentucky Department of Mining Engineering, to develop a mobile pilot-plant facility for the recovery of rare earth elements from coal.
Honaker and his team, which includes collaborators at Virginia Tech and West Virginia University, will develop and test a mobile processing facility that can efficiently recover the rare earth elements present in coal and coal byproducts in an environmentally friendly manner.