DOE awards $10M to advance the production of critical minerals

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) granted $10.2 million for to projects to advance processes to produce critical minerals in the United States.

The funding, provided by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will help meet the growing demand for critical minerals and materials, which are key to manufacturing clean energy technologies—such as solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and hydrogen fuel cells.

Developing new and alternative supplies from domestic resources will reduce the country’s dependence on offshore supplies.

“America’s clean energy and manufacturing boom will require large quantities of critical minerals and materials, which is why developing sustainable domestic resources for meeting this demand has become a Biden-Harris Administration priority,” U.S Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said. “We are investing in innovative technologies and techniques to protect scarce mineral resources all while enhancing our energy security.”

More than 95 percent of the U.S. demand for rare earth elements comes from foreign sources, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Also, more than 50 percent of most critical minerals come from foreign sources, and at least 12 critical minerals come exclusively from foreign sources.

The “Critical Material Innovation, Efficiency, and Alternatives” funding opportunity announcement (FOA) will provide up to $150 million over several rounds of project selections. Specifically, the FOA will support bench- and pilot-scale research, development, and demonstration projects to increase the robustness of domestic supply chains.

The first four projects selected for negotiation fall under the “Alternative Materials” area of interest and are focused on developing critical mineral and material alternatives and substitutes. They four projects include:

• Idaho National Laboratory, Battelle Energy Alliance in Idaho Falls, Idaho. They plan to develop a novel and fully domestic decarbonized pathway to manufacture high-purity synthetic graphite, along with other durable carbon-based materials, from carbon dioxide-based feedstocks.
• Iowa State University of Science and Technology in Ames, Iowa. This project seeks to integrate the conversion of copper waste generated through the recycling of permanent magnets with highly energy-efficient chemical processes for producing hydrogen.
• Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Penn. The college plans to research the materials science and engineering of boron nitride and its potential application in the manufacture of semiconductor devices as an alternative to gallium, almost none of which is produced in the United States.
• Aspen Aerogels, Inc. in Northborough, Mass. The company plans to scale up their lithium iron phosphate-based battery technology from bench‐scale to pilot‐scale for use in electric vehicles—as an alternative to lithium‐ion batteries that require key critical materials, such as nickel and cobalt, that are largely sourced from outside the United States.

The DOE plans to make additional selections under the FOA’s remaining areas of interest at a later date.

Since January 2021, the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) has committed an estimated $161 million for projects that support critical minerals and materials exploration, resource identification, production, and processing.

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