American Resources Corp (NASDAQ:AREC) announced that it has been selected by the US Department of Energy (DOE) for award negotiations under a funding program aimed at expanding domestic capacity to recover rare earth elements and other critical materials from coal-based industrial byproducts.
The company is one of five organizations selected under the DOE's Topic Area 1: Mines & Metals Pilots – Coal-Based Industry initiative. The program is intended to support pilot-scale facilities that recover rare earth elements and other critical materials from coal and coal-based feedstocks at domestic industrial sites.
American Resources said it will lead a consortium that will evaluate an integrated processing strategy for recovering and producing rare earth elements and other critical materials from unconventional domestic feedstocks, including coal-based byproducts.
ReElement Technologies, in which American Resources holds a minority ownership interest, is part of the consortium and is expected to provide its refining and separation technology for the project.
According to the company, the project will assess how existing high-technology-readiness-level processing technologies can be integrated to concentrate, condition and prepare coal-based feedstocks for downstream separation and purification. The initiative will focus on developing front-end processing pathways capable of producing feedstock suitable for advanced refining technologies, including ReElement's chromatographic separation platform.
"The challenge is not simply identifying where critical minerals occur. The challenge is establishing an economically viable process flow that can efficiently recover, concentrate, separate and refine those elements into marketable products," American Resources CEO Mark Jensen said in a statement.
He added that the project is intended to combine established processing technologies with ReElement's separation platform to evaluate whether value can be recovered from feedstocks that have historically been considered too complex or uneconomic to process.
The project will examine how rare earth elements and other critical materials can be recovered and upgraded before being directed into advanced refining operations.
American Resources said ReElement's platform is designed to separate and purify complex material streams into high-purity products for customers in industries including defense, energy, advanced manufacturing and technology.
"ReElement's refining-first model was developed to address one of the most important bottlenecks in the critical mineral supply chain: the ability to efficiently separate and purify complex inputs into qualified, high-value products," Jensen said.
"This DOE-supported initiative provides an opportunity to demonstrate how that capability can be integrated with practical front-end unit operations to create a more complete and economically viable domestic supply-chain solution."
American Resources said its role in the consortium aligns with its strategy of developing critical mineral feedstock sourcing, preprocessing and investment opportunities across the supply chain.
The company said it expects the project to contribute to the development of domestic supply chains for rare earth elements and other critical materials by advancing technologies that convert coal-based byproducts into commercially viable refining feedstocks.
The company noted that its selection is subject to a DOE negotiation process. The DOE said selection for award negotiations does not constitute a commitment to issue an award or provide funding, with any funding remaining subject to final negotiations and agency approval.