rare earth elements as the term implies
they're they seem to be rare but they are
not that rare actually they are present
everywhere but the quantities that we
are looking at and the amounts that we
need are different very small quantities
we use and small quantities we get from
processing large quantities of ores
that is the reason we call them
rare earths. These elements they're there
in parts per million sometimes it could
be tens of parts per million some
sometimes it could be hundreds of parts
per million but we have not looked at as
a major resource because the demand was
less and we didn't have to go to that
resource. as the demand is growing and we
are depending more and more on foreign
sources for this it has become extremely
important from a  national security
standpoint to explore the possibilities.
we are working with Texas Minerals,
Inventure and Jeddo Coal Company for this for
this project. The talk of this
collaboration started with our Energy
Days in 2016 when these industries came
to Penn State and when we developed this
process they were interested in taking
this to the next level also so we wrote
a joint proposal in 2016, and in Department
of Energy through NETL is funding this
endeavor with all all these partners.
this project when we originally started
was Obama's administration now it is
Trump administration, both
administrations are supporting this
particular activity where to get rare
earth elements from coal because it's
the most logical and sensible way
because it's environmentally friendly
and we need these rare earth elements
for all high-tech applications as well
as energy applications. he was really
excited actually to come there and
help the industry because we're not
mining any additional ones we are
actually using the same resources that
we are mining and we're going to be
doing in an environmentally friendly way
so it was really exciting actually
