AEMA, coalition launch legal challenge to BLM Conservation and Landscape Health Rule
The American Exploration & Mining Association was joined by a coalition in filing a challenge last Friday in the Wyoming district court.
Kentucky-headquartered metallurgic coal miner Ramaco Resources (NASDAQ: METC) announced Wednesday it has acquired a patent from the US Department of Energy’s research institution, the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), for the commercial development of its coal-to-products technology.
The process, which the company calls ‘revolutionary’ uses coal as feedstock to help create vehicle batteries, construction and infrastructure materials, and a range of consumer products.
Ramaco, which has operations in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, in May discovered new potential magnetic rare earth elements at its Brook mine in Wyoming. Ramaco’s subsidiary, Ramaco Carbon, is partnering with laboratories, researchers, and manufacturers and is privately investing to create an ecosystem of carbon tech innovation — building what it calls Carbon Valley in Wyoming.
The Biden administration has already begun to look at coal ash, coal waste, and acid mine drainage as feedstock for rare earths. The United States government announced in April it has set aside $450 million to advance clean energy projects on current and former coal mine sites, giving special attention to those that can provide new economic opportunities for coal communities.
The company said its patented process converts coal and coal-related mining waste into high-quality, affordable carbon nanosheets — also known as graphene. Carbon nanosheets are atomically thin pieces of carbon that can be used to improve the strength of composite materials like concrete, as well as in the performance of battery electrodes used in defense technologies and electric vehicles.
“These characteristics make carbon nanosheets a unique candidate for the batteries and concrete composites we use today,” Christopher Matranga, an NETL researcher who developed the technology with colleagues Fan Shi and McMahan Gray, said in the statement.
Carbon nanosheets are of growing strategic importance to the US economy and defense. This month China announced restrictions on its export of graphite on national security grounds, a material to which carbon nanosheets serve as a lab-created alternative.
The NETL technology makes the large-scale production of carbon nanosheets in a simple one-reactor process with a high product yield. Using inexpensive domestic coal as the base manufacturing feedstock also makes the economics more attractive, as opposed to more expensive feedstocks such as petroleum, it said. The new technology brings the manufacturing costs in line with other specialty carbon materials used to enhance building materials.
Ramaco said it is conceivable that the coal-related waste housed in mine impoundments could also be used to make nanosheets.
“Our approach is to use the commodity as a low-cost carbon feedstock to make high-value advanced carbon products and materials that we call “coal to products.” We have coined the phrase “carbon ore” to refer to coal used in this manner,” Ramaco CEO Randall Atkins said in a testimony to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in 2021, which he called “The New Carbon Age”.
“Using this novel carbon nanosheet technology, we will be able to pursue a variety of higher value commercial applications of coal,” Atkins said in Wednesday’s release. “This specific technology will help us focus on innovations for batteries applications, building and construction materials and a wide range of electronic devices. We look forward to working with our partners at NETL on this and other carbon products made from coal.”
