Washington: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has selected nine projects for $162 million in potential funding aimed at recovering critical minerals and valuable materials from mine waste and other industrial feedstocks. The initiative is part of Washington’s broader effort to strengthen domestic mineral supply chains and reduce reliance on foreign sources.
The selected projects will focus on recovering materials including scandium, copper, antimony and rare-earth elements from unconventional sources such as mine tailings, abandoned mining sites, existing industrial facilities and other waste streams.
Among the projects, SiTration, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinout, is developing technology to recover copper and other critical materials from diluted mining waste. Other initiatives include efforts to extract antimony using existing mining infrastructure and recover minerals from aluminum-production waste.
The DOE initiative reflects a growing push to treat mining waste and industrial byproducts as potential sources of strategic materials rather than simply as waste requiring disposal. The approach could help increase domestic mineral availability while reducing the need for entirely new mining operations.
Critical minerals are essential for defence systems, electric vehicles, renewable energy, advanced manufacturing and electronics. The United States is particularly focused on diversifying supply chains amid concerns over China’s dominant position in the processing and production of several strategic minerals.
The latest funding follows other U.S. government initiatives targeting critical-mineral recovery from unconventional sources, including a $75 million programme announced in July for projects using coal and coal-based feedstocks