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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Integrated CO2-facilitated Hydrometallurgical and Electrochemical Technology for Sustainable Mining and Recovery of Critical Elements from Wastes and Ashes

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/2324622· OSTI ID:2324622
 [1];  [2]
  1. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States); Columbia University
  2. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)

The availability of critical materials and other metals is very important for our national security and economic growth since they are widely used in defense and energy applications including batteries and wind turbines. Unfortunately, high grade ores have become scarce and their productions is dominated by limited countries. Thus, there is a strong need to obtain these materials from domestic sources. Municipal wastes are great candidates since they often contain high concentrations of metals. Since the metals in wastes and waste ashes are not in the form found in natural ores and contain a wide range of impurities, conventional extraction processes would not be effective. Thus, our project has developed an innovative MIDAS process based on the integrated CO2-facilitated hydrometallurgical and electrochemical technology that can effectively recover critical materials and metals from waste ashes while minimizing the environmental impacts. We have (i) characterized waste ashes to understand their physico-chemical properties, (ii) developed green solvent systems for hydrometallurgical extraction of critical elements and metals from waste ashes, (iii) explored electrochemical interfaces to refine the extracted metals.

Research Organization:
Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)
Contributing Organization:
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)
DOE Contract Number:
AR0001396
OSTI ID:
2324622
Report Number(s):
DOE-ColumbiaU--AR0001396-1
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English