American Resources Corporation (NASDAQ:AREC) reported that it has signed exclusive technology license agreements with Penn State University’s Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering to implement Penn State's intellectual property and technologies that separate and extract pre-concentrate critical and rare earth minerals from carbon-based resources, which will be provided by the company.
American Resources noted that the licensed technologies and efforts will be incorporated in the company's process chain, in order to enable a low-cost extraction, processing and purification of rare earth oxides while hopefully improving its environmental and commercial applications.
“We are extremely excited and honored to have the opportunity to work with a highly-regarded university such as Penn State, along with their team in the Energy and Mineral Engineering Department. From our initial meeting it was clear that they understood the importance of collaboration and commercialization of technologies to domestically produce rare earth and critical elements,” American Resources CEO Mark Jensen said in a statement.
READ: American Resources says subsidiary American Rare Earth obtains Pending Certified B Corporation status through B Lab
He added: “When developing a process to create an efficient and cost-effective solution to real world problems, rarely does an opportunity exist where there is a quadruple benefit by enhancing the value of our processed carbon, improving the percent recovery of that carbon, mitigating the long-term environmental impact of our operations, all while adding to our process chain to produce purified rare earth and critical elements.”
“We believe this relationship will continue to build given our alignment of interest of driving commercial value of critical and rare earth elements.”
Penn State University's Mohammad Rezaee also weighed in on the agreement, stating: “We are excited to work with American Resources and their team on their quest to commercially implement technologies for the rare earth and critical element marketplace.”
He added: “With their resource base, established assets, and desire to sponsor our work for additional technology development, we are confident that we will be able to work together to create valuable real-world processes that can help make rare earth production and element purification a reality in the United States.”
American Resources said it is retrofitting its existing processing, water and refuse treatment infrastructure to also include production processes of rare earth mineral pre-concentrate.
American Resources Corporation is a company focused on the extraction and processing of metallurgical carbon, an essential ingredient used in steelmaking, critical and rare earth minerals for the electrification market, and reprocessed metal to be recycled.
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