Simultaneous Extraction of Clean Coal and Rare Earth Elements From Coal Tailings Using Alkali-Acid Leaching Process

With the supply restriction from traditional rare earth deposits, alternative sources of rare earth elements (REEs) such as coal are being studied. The United States National Energy Technology Laboratory has identified US coal deposits as a potential source of rare earth elements. Several techniques such as physical separation, flotation, ion-exchange, agglomeration, and leaching are being evaluated for the successful exploitation of these elements from coal and its by-products. A previous study published in the Geoscience BC 2018 mineral report on the characterization of REE in the British Columbian coal samples have shown that a major portion of the rare earth in the run of mine coal reports to the middling and tailing streams. Hence, this study is focused on the extraction of the rare earth from coal tailings. Several studies have shown the use of an alkali-acid leaching process to successfully demineralize various high ash coals to produce a clean coal concentrate since the ash-bearing components such as clay and quartz were removed from the coal during this process. In this study, the alkali-acid leach process was adopted to chemically clean coal tailings as well as to extract rare earth elements. Different process parameters such as sodium hydroxide (NaOH) concentration, temperature, and time were studied. Results showed that it is possible to extract more than 85% of REE with this process and simultaneously produce clean coal from coal tailing.