CRITICAL MINERALSA $40B Critical Mineral Supply Chain Could Start in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania has a mine pollution problem. America has a critical mineral shortage. And both problems may get solved as researchers find these critical and strategic elements in the polluted waters that come from acid mine drainage.
Pennsylvania has a mine pollution problem. America has a critical mineral shortage.
And both problems may get solved as researchers find these critical and strategic elements in the polluted waters that come from acid mine drainage. If all goes well, Pennsylvania could become a leader in boosting national security — while potentially creating billions of dollars in value from environmental hazards.
“You don’t need hundreds of billions of dollars to do this; you just need tens of thousands to capture rare earths that have no domestic sourcing at this point,” Bernie Lynch, project manager for the SCORE Consortium, said during a July meeting of the Department of Environmental Protection’s Citizens Advisory Council.
SCORE, which received a Department of Defense designation as a community support program, is working to create a domestic supply of scandium in America within three years by extracting it from mine and industrial waste.
Scandium is one of 30 elements prioritized by the DoD and is used in alloys, ceramics and fuel cells. Other elements, like lithium, gallium, and neodymium, have military, tech and medical uses, but are non-existent in American supply chains, leaving the country dependent on countries like China for sourcing and processing.
So far, SCORE has received $6 million from defense funding and match partners; Lynch described the designation as a deputization for the country’s military-industrial base to support the department’s goals.
“We’re growing supply chains by sourcing directly out of e-waste,” she said. “There is sufficient mineral value in our waste stream throughout the U.S.— I don’t want to say we don’t need to mine again, but we don’t need to mine again.”
For scandium, progress is ahead of schedule.
“The funding we received was to do a demonstration scale, meant to be up to 1 ton a year (of recovered scandium),” Lynch said. “What we’ll end up building is 3.5-4 tons a year. In the lab, they were able to create efficiencies that were not expected.”
The goal is to demonstrate the lab results and scale up with larger companies for commercial application.
“Not only can it be real, but we also have the path and knowledge, the team who can do it,” Lynch said. “That’s the point of the consortium.”
SCORE isn’t alone in its work, either.
