Recycling coal

ABINGDON — A team of Virginia energy officials, mining/energy industry companies, and colleges is looking at how recycling coal waste can provide needed minerals and metals for high-tech products.
Officials from Virginia Tech, the state Department of Energy, and mining engineering fields met at the Virginia Highlands Small Business Incubator in Abingdon on Wednesday to outline Evolve Central Appalachia. The project aims to show how Southwest Virginia can become a link in federal efforts to strengthen domestic supply chains for rare earth elements and critical minerals for technology uses.
Michael Karmis, who started E-CAPP and recently retired as the director of the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research, joined new E-CAPP manager Richard Bishop to outline the project’s goals.
Karmis said the Biden administration has proposed a $37 billion effort to strengthen domestic supply chains for semiconductor chips, high-capacity vehicle batteries, rare earth minerals for electronics and technology uses, and pharmaceutical products. E-CAPP’s efforts target the first three parts of that effort, he added.
At least 50 metals, minerals, and elements have been identified as critical materials because the U.S. depends on imported supplies. Karmis said those imports become more critical when they come from unstable countries or competitors such as China and Russia.
Critical materials are needed for cell phones, computers, computer chips, electric vehicle batteries, wind turbines, and solar power panels, Karmis said.
“Everyday products from appliances to cell phones require critical minerals to manufacture,” said Virginia Department of Energy Director John Warren. “We need to reverse course on our reliance on global suppliers, and Evolve CAPP represents an important step in proving Southwestern Virginia can do it and do it right.”
Karmis said demand for those critical materials could rise as much as 600% by 2050. Coal contains many of those materials, he said, and coal waste — gob piles, impoundment ponds, acid mine drainage, fly ash, wastewater from oil and gas production — also contain them.
While Southwest Virginia and the entire central Appalachian region from New York to Alabama houses waste coal resources, Karmis said using those domestic sources will require responsible recovery methods to protect the region’s environment.
Karmis said E-CAPP includes support from several energy companies, engineering firms, and public-private cooperation to evaluate what supplies of recoverable minerals and metals can be found in the region. The project will also evaluate and recommend technology and processes to recover materials in an economical and environmentally sound way.
Developing recovery technologies can bring new technology job opportunities to Southwest Virginia, West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and Tennessee, Karmis said. A coalition of two universities and four community and technical colleges in the region — including Mountain Empire Community College — will help E-CAPP look at the kinds of jobs needed to help keep material recovery, processing, and refining in the region.
“We should insist that it’s our resource and we want to keep the entire value chain here, including the high-tech end of producing the materials,” Karmis said.
E-CAPP will be developing a technology lab at the Business Incubator, Karmis said, and the project hopes to offer internships to community college and high school students in the coming weeks to start learning about the field.
Virginia Department of Energy Deputy Director Will Clear said coal-fired power plants, including Dominion Energy’s Virginia City plant near St. Paul, can also provide coal fly ash byproduct that contains many of the critical materials needed for the nation’s technology industry.
“This is a long play for Virginia’s Southwest and entirely within our wheelhouse,” said Clear. “The Commonwealth is working hard to clean up gob coal, and this team’s research is offering up a solution that could accelerate that cleanup and stabilize our regional economy through a new industry-relevant to domestic and global manufacturers.”