DOE to invest $17M in critical minerals supply chain

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has selected 14 projects for award negotiations totaling up to $17 million that are intended to accelerate critical materials innovation while promoting safe, sustainable, economic and efficient solutions to meet current and future supply chain needs. The investments include projects to examine the recovery of critical materials from scrap and postconsumer products.

This announcement is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award or provide funding. Before funding can be issued, DOE and the applicants will undergo a process, and DOE could cancel negotiations and rescind the selection for any reason during that time. Awards also could change pending final negotiations.

The projects, across 11 states, target manufacturing high-impact components and technologies, such as hydrogen fuel cells, magnets for high-efficiency motors, high-performance lithium-ion batteries and high-yield low-defect power electronics, according to the DOE. They are coordinated through DOE’s Critical Materials Collaborative, which serves to align, grow and coordinate funding for the innovation ecosystem for critical materials research in the U.S., with the goals of accelerating commercialization, deployment and development of secure domestic critical material supply chains.

The supported small-scale demonstrations will help derisk critical materials innovations and accelerate their commercial readiness and adoption, DOE adds.

Investments through the Critical Materials Accelerator funding program are part of a governmentwide effort to support resilient supply chains and address challenges in each of the DOE’s Critical Minerals and Materials strategic pillars: diversify and expand supply, develop alternatives, improve materials and manufacturing efficiency and build the circular economy.  This opportunity was funded by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office.  

The selected projects: 

• recover critical material from scrap and postconsumer products: 
  • Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University, College Station, Texas, could receive $1.28 million to develop a cost-effective and sustainable solid-phase extraction (SPE) method to recover rare earth elements (REEs) from electronic scrap. SPE using crumpled graphene-balls-based porous membranes will be developed for neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium recovery. The project also seeks to develop a novel synthetic approach of tripodal diglycolamide ligands with stronger REE affinity using simple, cheap, readily available chemicals in just four steps.
  • Infinite Elements, El Paso, Texas, could receive $1.5 million to demonstrate a combination of bioleaching and advanced peptide design to recycle critical materials from electronic scrap. The project aims to increase critical material recovery yields from 45 percent to 85 percent while improving energy efficiency by more than 50 percent. If successful, the project could be used with a variety of material streams to produce rare earth elements domestically. 

• use magnets with reduced critical materials content 
  • University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas, could receive $1 million to scale up production of a neodymium iron boron, or NdFeB, magnet with partial substitution of neodymium and praseodymium with cerium and lanthanum, using a sintering aid. This project not only could reduce the use of critical REE in a permanent magnet by 30 to 40 percent but also could eliminate the need for dysprosium and achieve an increased energy product.
  • Ames National Laboratory, Ames, Iowa, could receive $1 million to prototype and scale up the NdFeB magnet technology developed at the Critical Materials Innovation Hub (CMI Hub). The technology aims to improve manufacturing efficiency by enhancing the magnet’s mechanical toughness, which reduces the failure rate when machining the blocks into parts. Improving the magnet’s strength, reducing waste and machining failure rate, increasing the magnet’s service life and making it easier to recycle the magnets would lead to savings in the critical materials required to make the traditional NdFeB sintered magnets.
  • ABB Inc., Cary, North Carolina, could receive $1.52 million to develop and prototype motors using manganese-bismuth (MnBi-) based polymer-bonded permanent magnet technology for general purpose and traction applications. If successful, this technology would eliminate the use of critical materials in industrial motors and nondrivetrain vehicles, which account for 38 percent of the market.
  • Niron Magnetics Inc. Minneapolis, could receive $2.7 million to design, analyze and fabricate a prototype permanent magnet motor without using critical rare earth materials. This technology will use Niron's variable flux field intensifying iron nitride permanent magnet material, with a potential for significant shift in the state-of-the-art for high-performance electric motors. If successful, the motors would demonstrate a 50 percent decrease in carbon dioxide as compared with a NdFeB-based motor and increase the efficiency of the motor by 2 percent over the entire drive cycle.

• improve unit operations of processing and manufacturing of critical materials

• Free Form Fibers, Saratoga Springs, New York, could receive $926,000 to create a novel approach to producing silicon carbide (SiC), a vital component of semiconductors, by using a laser-driven chemical vapor deposition (LCVD) technology to produce a low-defect, high-purity SiC for use in physical vapor transport manufacturing that would result in high production yields for SiC boules.
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, could receive $1 million to scale up its novel solvent extraction technology, gas-assisted microbubble extraction (GAME) technology for low concentrations of metals using high aqueous to organic phase ratios. The project would use acid mine drainage generated from a copper mine as the primary feedstock to produce critical materials with a minimum purity of 95 percent for neodymium, dysprosium and yttrium, and 99.5 percent for nickel, cobalt, manganese and copper.
• University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, North Dakota, could receive $1 million to conduct a prototype demonstration of a proven process for producing low-cost, high-performance silicon monoxide with graphene coating (SiO/G) anode materials for lithium (Li)-ion batteries (LIBs) while reducing water, waste, chemical intensity and energy consumption. The proposed work would achieve three key components needed for LIBs: 1) high-purity silicon scrap produced from semiconductor manufacturers; 2) innovative plasma-based SiO synthetic techniques and 3) a unique graphene precursor, humic acid and UND’s patented technology for in-situ synthesis of graphene coated SiO anode. The prototype would be a key first step to establishing a domestic production facility for high-performance SiO anode materials to meet the increasing anode demands in the Li-ion battery industry.
• Ames National Laboratory, Ames, Iowa, could receive  $1 million to demonstrate a cost-competitive, one-step castable, grain-oriented and fully dense cerium-based gap magnet. The project would scale up the process to fabricate the cerium-based gap magnet to produce 1 to 5 kilograms of material. Through these project objectives, the team would deliver a fully dense anisotropic gap magnet that aims to satisfy needs for a wide range of middle-energy applications, including steeper and micro motors and motors for drones and electric vehicles. 
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, could receive $1 million to develop an energy-efficient, cost-effective, high-yield and environmentally friendly integrated process for separating  and recovering high-purity rare earth elements (REEs) from domestic waste stream sources and mining tailings. This would be performed using a single-step integrated membrane solvent extraction process. By reducing the number of stages involved in solvent extraction, this process offers a small overall footprint with linear scalability and could achieve high extraction rates of REEs from unconventional feedstocks while maintaining low energy and cost requirements. If successful, the project would demonstrate separation and recovery of REEs with more than 99.5 percent purity and more than 90 percent yield from domestic mine tailings and waste streams and separation of heavy REEs from the resulting product of mixed REEs. 
• Summit Nanotech USA Corp., Lafayette, Colorado, could receive $1 million to enhance operational efficiency, lower energy consumption and minimize the environmental footprint of the entire direct lithium extraction (DLE) process. Water demand is a key issue for lithium extraction, and the proposed work would recycle and reuse water, minimizing water consumption and environmental impact. The advanced electrochemical membrane separation that uses electrodialysis reversal has been validated at bench scales to achieve water purification and desalination rates with lower capital and operating costs than competing recovery systems. 

• reduce critical material demand for clean energy technologies:   

• Celadyne Technologies, Chicago, could receive $1 million to develop catalyst formulations that pair with a thin low-resistance proton exchange membrane that uses 72 percent less platinum and iridium and 92 percent less fluorine for hydrogen devices. The membrane, Dura, was developed as a gas-impermeable hydrocarbon layer in a bilayer architecture using DOE SBIR funding. Developing a catalyst to use with the Dura membrane would enable high-current density electrolyzer operation with low critical material demand and reduced hydrogen crossover for fuel cells.  
• COnovate, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, could receive $1 million to build on its bench-scale success in developing and patenting an eCOphite active anode material to replace graphite in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). The material permits higher lithium capacity compared with graphite, leading to increased energy density, it enables LIBs with faster charging, offers better low-temperature performance and cycles more safely than industry-standard graphite-based LIBs. The project outlines a plan to reduce the amount of battery-grade graphite needed per LIB anode from at least 25 percent and up to 100 percent replacement while meeting or exceeding 90 percent of baseline.

“DOE is helping reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign supply chains through innovative solutions that will tap domestic sources of the critical materials needed for next-generation technologies,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm says. “These investments—part of our industrial strategy—will keep America’s growing manufacturing industry competitive while delivering economic benefits to communities nationwide.”