In June, coal producer Ramaco Resources will open the mother of all mines in Wyoming.
But coal isn’t what the company is after.
The mine has three of the country’s 50 most sought-after critical minerals—gallium, germanium, and scandium—used in semiconductors, EVs, smartphones, fiber optic cables and warheads, among other things.
“We have discovered we have the world’s only primary source mine embedded with gallium, germanium and scandium,” Ramaco Resources’ chief executive, Randall Atkins, told Forbes.
Sigh. Bullshit, as I’ve pointed out here, here and here.
They’ve a coal mine with the normal amounts – for a coal mine – of Ga, Ge and Sc. (They also claim rare earths and again, just normal trace amounts). But because Ga, Ge and Sc are being bigged up they’re bigging it up. No one knows how to – profitably – extract those elements in those concentrations. Because they’re in trade amounts like they are in a lot of coal.
Because the amounts are pretty run of the mill for coal this means that if they do have an extractkon method then that means that all of these are really common metals. Becuase that method can then be applied to many, many, other coal mines.
Now, so far so bollix. Mining isn’t ever exactly short of these sorts of stories.
But this is a good test – as with another company, Niocorp – about how insane or not US economic policy is going to be under Trump. Domestic production, critical minerals, not China and so on. OK, maybe all of these are true. But if Ramaco (or Niocorp) get Federal funding then the Feds have gone mad.
A useful little test for us all. How mad are they in their industrial policy?
I assume that the coal is for power stations, so will be crushed anyway.
Is there an electromagnetic or light induced method of detecting such metals ?
Although the romantic in me has some old prospector running out of the mine shouting “Yee ha ! I got me a nugget of that thar Scandium !”
“Is there an electromagnetic” No.
At least, not so far. And if there is then it can be applied at all coal crushing plants….
From memory, you have to chemically react the coal with acids and process the slurry, the scandium compounds being very very slightly heavier/lighter than the other compounds, then unprocess the compounds back into scandium. And you have to slurryify a mountain to get a pocket full of Scandium.
To Be Fair, he does describe (in part, at least) the true concentrations of these elements in the coal, and the difficulties of economic extraction. It does become clear, with a complete reading, that much of the headline enthusiasm is speculative – at best. He seems like an overly-enthusiastic booster for coal, lunching off the current scientifically-confused media hype about rare-earth and strategic minerals. The real strategic value in his mine is more-likely in the endless trains of coal headed to power plants that produce the abundant, reliable energy needed for true strategic superiority.
llater,
llamas
Having read Tim’s many writings on this subject for years I am now an EXPERT!
I am continually amazed by the hype. It’s so forceful I have to reread an article by Tim every now and then to keep myself from being carried away.
If the elements are in coal, do they survive in coal ash or will they have evaporated during combustion?
Because if they haven’t evaporated wouldn’t it be potentially easier to treat the ash rather than the coal?
Drax: what about wood ash? Might it contain valuable trace elements?
Depends on the element. Germanium concentrates into the fly ash. If you’ve 1,000 ppm Ge in the coal then the fly ash will be 10,000 ppm Ge. So, logically, you get Ge from the fly ash. About 50% (depends upon the year and how the zinc mills are running, the other major source) of global supply is from this source.
People have looked at the others and none – so far at least – has proven economic.
The most valuable element in the proposed mine is Carbon, I suggest.
Talk of rare earths is to get planning permission to extract it.
All this rare earth stuff is nonsense, as is all the tech its supposedly needed for. IMO we need to take Western society back to about 1997, politically, economically and technologically. Email but no internet to speak of. Basic mobiles but no smart phones. Computers powerful enough to be useful, but not too powerful to start ruling us. No illegal immigration facilitated by global communications. Engineering that was reliable (due to CNC machining taking over from humans) but not smothered in electronics that stop working because its Tuesday. Environmentalism meant cleaning up rivers, not trying to impoverish the country. Enough free trade to keep Western producers honest, but not enough to supplant them entirely. The failure of the USSR and the freeing of Eastern Europe from communism was fresh in everyone’s minds, so socialists were on the retreat. The only bad thing about the 90s was that England had a sh*t cricket team, but I’ll put up with that to get all the other goodies. We had paradise and we threw it away.
Pushing at an open door Jim
I’ve just wasted Tuesday evening because I had to rerun a backup because a Microsoft update buggered the settings on my server.