CAN COAL HELP U.S. TECHNOLOGY?

Computers, TVs, cell phones, automobiles, etc. increasingly rely on rare elements to provide us with vivid colors on the screens, long-lasting batteries, and other essential components. These elements are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive as traditional resources are exhausted and supplies are controlled by fewer and fewer countries. For example, about 95% of all rare-earth elements, used in many electronic devices, batteries, etc. are now supplied by China. The U.S. is also 100% dependent on imports of cesium, gallium, germanium indium, niobium, rubidium, scandium, strontium, tantalum, and thorium, all essential elements in modern technology. Recent studies have demonstrated that it may be economically feasible to extract the rare earth elements from coal fly ash. Commercialization of this process opens up the possibility of extracting other valuable elements from the processed fly ash. How likely is it that coal fly ash can be a source of these strategically important elements? The U.S. burns about 900,000,000 tons of coal annually resulting in some 135,000,000 tons of combustion byproducts. About 75% of this total or 100,000,000 tons is fly ash. The estimated average concentration of selected elements in the resultant fly ash, tons per year that can be obtained, and multiple of U.S. annual consumption is: cesium (6.7 ppm, 670 tons, 268 times), gallium (38 ppm, 3800 tons, 106 times), germanium (38 ppm, 3800 tons, 0.28 times), indium (0.2 ppm, 20 tons, 0.16 times), niobium (19 ppm, 1900 tons, 0.25 times), rubidium (140 ppm, 14,000 tons, 28,000 times), scandium (28 ppm, 2800 tons, 0.16 times), strontium (867 ppm, 86,700 tons, 4 times), tantalum (1.5 ppm, 150 tons, 0.23 times), and thorium (921.3 ppm 92,130 tons, 460,000 times). Coal combustion products may thus prove to be a secure, environmentally beneficial, source for many strategically important elements.