Researchers produce nearly-pure rare earth concentrates from coal

Re:Researchers produce nearly-pure rare earth concentrates f... by pjc50 on Monday March 12, 2018 @08:04AM (#16567583)

Unanswered questions:

- what happens to the carbon from this process? Does it end up as atmospheric CO2?

- what happens to the energy available from that carbon? Thrown away or used to run the process?

- can't you just run this on fly ash?

- how does this compare to regular mining?

- what happens to everything else in the coal, such as sulphur and thorium?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Researchers produce nearly-pure rare earth concentrates f... by maxerickson on Monday March 12, 2018 @09:07AM (#16567874)

The idea is to insert it into the existing coal consumption pipeline:

It sounds like it is only going to consume byproduct of the washing process.

[ Parent | on HN ]