In order to exist and produce, many industries require what’s known as strategic minerals and rare earth elements. These are generally not cheap and in recent years have gone even more expensive due to short world supply (and increasing demand world over)
The nature of these elements is specific so they cannot be just derived from recycled materials and products after rubbish removal and processing.Strategic minerals include a wide range of metals which are vital for many industries including aerospace and green energy, what’s more such industries require a constant supply of such minerals and elements. Rare earth minerals like gallium, germanium, indium, and tellurium are crucial for industry and manufacturing of certain products, however as their name implies they are hard to find, and very expensive.
At the moment, China is the biggest producer and exporter of rare earth elements, particularly metals. Having said this, worldwide demand for these scarce elements is far outpacing China’s ability to mine, refine and export these so nations are starting to look elsewhere for a more abundant and steady supply of this minerals. Science has pointed to no other but coal ash as the most suitable source of rare earth minerals. Industrial scientists and chemists have known of the presence of rare earth minerals and metals in coal and coal ash for decades.
Until now though, the need to recycle coal ash in order to extract these has not been an issue due to two main factors. First, recycling of coal ash is quite expensive, even on an industrial scale, second – until now rare earth elements were more available to the industries which required them, but high demand has made rare earth metals a scarce and expensive commodity. In result, coal ash recycling might be the solution industry needs. Mining for strategic metals is generally an expensive, slow and highly regulated exercise which not many companies and governments can undertake and regulate. It usually takes years for potential mining sites to be prospected and environmentally approved for exploitation by governments, which inevitably makes the process overly expensive and not economically viable for many industry participants.
The environmental factor is the biggest problem for mining companies, though regulators have every reason to be concerned as evident by events in China, improper mining and use of chemicals in extraction and processing of strategic elements will result in massive, detrimental effects for the environment, which would in turn ruin a country’s economy to a large extent. Recycling of coal ash for extraction of rare metals seems the be a viable option as raw coal contains lots of valuable metals (proven by science) and combustion process (burning of coal) tends to concentrate and increase the contents of such minerals in coal ash – good news for industry. It is studied and proven that after coal combustion, the contents of strategic minerals in coal ash increases and enriches several times more than in raw coal. At the moment, coal ash recycling technology is being refined in order to make the recycling and extraction process more efficient.