Midwest Energy Emissions Corp (ME2C Environmental) (OTCQB:MEEC) announced Tuesday new technologies under development intended to improve the processing of rare earth elements (REEs) in North America.
The Department of Energy has reported a global market for REEs valued at about $13.2 billion in 2019, with a growth expectation of 10.7% annually, between 2020 to 2026, the company noted.
According to the DOE, the US currently imports all of the REEs it consumes, of which around 80% are imported from China, the global leader. In 2018, the agency also said that the global demand for rare earth elements was about 150,000 tons, with the US demand at about 11% or about 16,500 tons.
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REEs today are commonly used in automobile catalysts and petroleum refining catalysts, televisions, magnets, batteries, and medical devices.
“These new technologies under development in conjunction with our collaboration with Dr. Scott A. Drummond are focused on the extraction process of obtaining rare earth elements abundantly available from coal mining and the coal-fired power industry, along with mining operations,” said CEO Richard MacPherson in a statement.
“Our technologies focus on improving the cost of extracting rare earth minerals along with improving the environmental footprint of extracting those rare earth elements from their solvent state.”
He said the company’s technologies can be reused multiple times to isolate higher concentrations of the REEs, which significantly reduces costs and limits the amount of harmful acids both used and disposed of during the extraction process.
“We strongly believe, after continued research and development, that this new sorbent technology will dramatically improve rare earth element production in North America.”
MacPherson added: “Our recovery process under development will offer significant improvements compared to technologies currently available across the industry, which now use either a liquid or heat-based approach. This more efficient manufacturing process of extracting these highly valuable elements can be used across all present major market segments and will allow the USA to better compete with China economically with significantly reduced environmental impacts.”
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