Techno-Economic and Life Cycle Assessments for Sustainable Rare Earth Recovery from Coal Byproducts using Biosorption

Alipanah, Majid; Park, Dan M.; Middleton, Andrew; Dong, Ziye; Hsu-Kim, Heileen; Jiao, Yongqin; Jin, Hongyue

doi:10.1021/acssuschemeng.0c04415

Title: Techno-Economic and Life Cycle Assessments for Sustainable Rare Earth Recovery from Coal Byproducts using Biosorption

Journal Article · Tue Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 2020 · ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.0c04415· OSTI ID:1836209

Alipanah, Majid ^[1];

^[2]; Middleton, Andrew ^[3];

^[2];

^[3];

^[2];

^[1]

Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States)
Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Duke Univ., Durham, NC (United States)

Coal byproducts could be a promising feedstock to alleviate the supply risk of critical rare earth elements (REEs) due to their abundance and REE content. Herein, we investigated the economic and environmental potential of producing REEs from coal fly ash and lignite through an integrated process of leaching, biosorption, and oxalic precipitation on the basis of experimental data and modeling results. Two microbe immobilization systems (polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA) microbe beads and Si sol–gels) were examined for their efficiency in immobilizing Arthrobacter nicotianae to selectively recover REEs. Techno-economic analysis revealed that North Dakota lignite could be a profitable feedstock when Si sol–gel is used due to its high cell loading and REE adsorption capacity as well as high reuse cycles. Life cycle analysis revealed that Si sol–gel-based biosorption could be more environmental friendly than the prevailing REE production in China due to the use of less toxic chemicals. However, fly ash sourced from Powder River Basin coals was neither profitable nor environmentally sustainable, primarily due to low solubility of high-value scandium at an economical pulp density (100 g ash/L of acid solution). To further improve the proposed biotechnology, future research could focus on scandium recovery, leaching efficiency at a high pulp density, and reuse cycles of the immobilized microbes.

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Research Organization:: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC52-07NA27344

OSTI ID:: 1836209

Report Number(s):: LLNL-JRNL-811549; 1017946

Journal Information:: ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, Vol. 8, Issue 49; ISSN 2168-0485

Publisher:: American Chemical Society (ACS)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT
Rare earth element
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Polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA) microbe bead
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Reaction products
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Title: Techno-Economic and Life Cycle Assessments for Sustainable Rare Earth Recovery from Coal Byproducts using Biosorption

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