ANACTISIS LLC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 20d

Description

A great number of technological advancements have been spurred by the unique properties of the rare earth elements (REE)- This widespread application has made the REE absolute necessities for sustaining healthy technological, scientific, and economic growth- In nearly all of these technologies, there are no currently viable substitutes for the REE with equivalent performance- Processes based on conventional mining and metallurgy – which are expensive and laborious with a significant environmental burden – are currently the only economical way of extracting and harvesting these elements- At the same time, global demand outstrips production, and previously mined stocks currently cover the difference via reprocessing- Moreover, since the closure of the Mountain Pass (CA) mine, domestic production is effectively zero, with growing reliance on Chinese imports for the past 15 years- The proposed technology addresses technical and commercial limitations that have hindered previous attempts to extract metals from industrial wastes- Anactisis has developed a suite of specialized adsorbent media, selective to scandium (Sc) and the rare earth elements (REE), which enable recovery of these high-value, critical materials from low-grade- or waste resources, such as coal combustion residuals- This core technology can dramatically disrupt conventional approaches to industrial waste management- Additional economic and environmental improvements to this process are proposed in this project-