colliery. (Ref: hangela, Pixabay).
This week, HG Ventures, a unit of Heritage Group, and American Rare Earth LLC, a subsidiary of American Resources Corporation, are listed on the NASDAQ. The company announced that it will join forces to expand the recycling of batteries, magnets and e-waste, with the goal of recycling and supplying key minerals and rare earth metals to the U.S. and global markets.
As a fundamental element of an electrified economy, mining rare earths can be challenging because the materials needed are either unmined or potentially stranded, for example in old coal mines – environmental legacy responsibilities permeate North America.
Heritage Group, which owns retriv Technologies, the largest lithium-ion battery recycling company in North America, and American Resources, one of the largest owners of mining infrastructure and related assets in eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, both want to work together through agency to address this issue by leveraging coal remnants from the vast coal mining area of Appalachia in the eastern United States. Rare earths were stripped away and recycled at a new facility under construction in Noble Esville, Indiana.
American Resources announced in November 2021 that its initial rare earth and critical element separation and purification facility currently under construction has received final approval and will be operational in the first quarter of 2022.
Last December, the West Virginia Economic Development Authority approved a $45 million yield bond for American Resources' Wyoming County Coal, west Virginia.
"What we're doing is restructuring and repositioning large estate assets that will focus on monetizing the entire asset base for infrastructure electrification," Mark Jensen, CEO of American Resources, told MINING.com. "We acquired legacy debt that most people didn't know how to deal with, [and] leveraged these acid mining drainage sites, and through a range of technologies, we changed the economic benefits of the by-product."
The process involves capturing end-of-life windmill generators, electric vehicle motors, lithium-ion batteries/black blocks, and carbon-based deposition feedstocks, then digesting them into a salt, which is then separated and purified by separation displacement chromatography.
Rare earth permanent magnets from wind turbines are demagnetized and ready for recovery. Image from American Resources.
Once the pilot plant bears fruit, the company hopes to build a purification commercial facility that will run up to 12 production lines and produce more than 3 million kilograms of rare earth elements.
"We either change the carbon during processing or during processing, and on top of that, we add our rare earth technology to our existing coal characteristics to produce rare earth concentrates," Jensen said.
"We want to be part of the supply chain that is absolutely needed today, while leveraging environmental responsibility through coal mining, finding high-value ways to mine rare earths in an economical way, which is a challenge." Through this, we have built a chain of technical processes that bring us closer to the circular economy, where we focus on recycling existing magnets. ”
Jonathan Schalliol, director of HG Ventures, a venture capital arm of Heritage Group, said the parent company has operations in environmental services, buildings and materials, and specialty chemicals primarily in North America, Europe and China.
Schalliol told MINING.com: "We're investing in companies trying to figure out how to move the U.S. rare earth industry forward."
"We invest in what we think is the future of the industry – we are looking for a sustainable future for material infrastructure, environmental solutions and industrial systems, while also investing in battery manufacturers," he said.
Schalliol said HG Ventures offers expertise in recycling and processing materials, and they target 36 percent of high-value magnetite concentrates.
To get into the supply chain, You need ore or magnets, and you also need technology, jensen says, and the key to their business is the final stage of separation and purification technology to produce products that enter the magnet or cathode.
"Our technology can take any form of concentrate — in the coal industry, you can produce a fraction of a millionths of a concentrate, and we can isolate, purify, and make high-value rare earth products," Jensen said, adding that this can be used for any ore in any mining operation.
"In today's U.S., no one has been able to separate and purify these elements in cost-competitive numbers, much lower than China for technical reasons," Jensen said.
"From an environmental point of view, we can process not only the carbon in the raw materials, but also the waste from the waste batteries – our facilities are able to handle all of these raw materials," Jensen said.
"The concept of concentration is important — concentration in pursuit of high value — and that's the key driver," he said. "The mining industry needs to make better use of innovative technologies [as] a way to seek to clean up environmental responsibilities."