Rare earth elements (REEs), including lanthanides, scandium and yttrium, are essential in modern technologies ranging from smartphones and wind turbines to medical imaging and cancer treatment. Though REEs aren't especially scarce in Earth's crust - they are more abundant than precious metals such as gold and platinum, for example - they are widely dispersed and typically found in low concentrations in natural ores, spurring interest in developing efficient and sustainable methods for their extraction and recovery.
Young-Shin Jun, a professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, received a one-year $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and $25,000 from WashU's Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization for her work to extract REEs from coal. With the DOE's support, Jun plans to develop novel technology to extract, recover and enrich REEs effectively from solid coal-based materials in a way that does not harm the environment. Her work is part of the nation's broader effort to secure critical resources for green technologies crucial to national energy security and environmental sustainability.
