Monday, January 18, 2021

Mining Lignite For Rare Earth Minerals -- Geoff Simon -- January 18, 2021

 From Geoff Simon last week, frack sand in North Dakota and mining lignite for rare earth minerals. Oh, this will make the east coast environmentalists go nuts. LOL. All that strip mining for EVs. 

Senate Appropriations Committee members heard an update this week from Lynn Helms, Director of the Department of Mineral Resources, related to research by state geologists that has led to the start of frac sand mining operations, and the possibility of mining lignite for rare earth minerals. 


Helms said rare earth minerals are the elements used in computers, LED televisions, and defense applications.


“Most everything today, in terms of electronics uses some level of rare earth minerals,” he said, noting that currently 95% of the world’s supply comes from China. 


Helms said that 12 samples from four different locations are well above the DOE’s economic threshold for the potential of mining rare earth minerals.

He said the outlook in North Dakota for capturing the elemental material from lignite seams, as well as fly ash from lignite combustion, is “very exciting.”

4 comments:

  1. I can envision the heads exploding already!

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    1. Yes, especially when "they" learn that the really good stuff is in the lignite inside the national parks. LOL.

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  2. We're always hearing this sort of stuff from the people in charge of pumping up interest. I'll believe it when I see it.

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    1. Oh, I agree 1,000%. Remember all those stories some years ago about all the potash they could mine in North Dakota!? That would have been an environmental nightmare -- of course, that could still happen, but after that flurry of discussion years ago about potash in ND, nothing happened. The issue quietly went away. But at least, if push comes to shove and there's no more rare earth metals to be found in the world, we will always have lignite in ND.

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