PMO Virginia Welcomes You
Innovative Carbon Technology
About PMO Virginia
The Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Energy Technology Laboratory’s (NETL) Feasibility of Recovering Rare Earth Elements program is currently heavily focused on developing cutting edge extraction, separation and recovery technologies for the production of rare earth elements (REEs) and critical materials (CMs) from carbon and carbon reserve piles. This RD&D program consists of developing process and production technologies, environmental management, and field materials sampling and characterization, along with systems integration, optimization and efficiency improvements to produce REEs and CMs from carbon and carbon by-products streams, such as carbon and carbon reserve, clay/sandstone over/under-burden coal seam materials, power generation ash and aqueous effluents as acid mine drainage (AMD) sludge.
Critical Minerals
Critical Elements
Critical elements are elements integral to advanced energy production, transmission, and storage. Titanium, for example, is one mineral of high value which is abundant in the PMO reserve.
Titanium has such high value due to its remarkable strength, low weight, and resistance to corrosion. It is used in for aircrafts, in shipbuilding, it has geothermal applications, it is used in medical devices such as heart valves and artificial joints and much more!
Rare Earth Elements
Rare earth metals, a group of 17 chemical elements in the Earth's crust, are crucial to keeping our society running smoothly–and to transitioning to a clean-tech-driven economy. They're used in electric car motors, lithium ion batteries, computer hard drives, solar panels, and wind turbines.
Metallurgic Carbon
Metallurgical carbon or coking carbon is used in the process of creating coke necessary for iron and steel-making. Coke is a porous, hard black rock of concentrated carbon that is created by heating bituminous carbon without air to extremely high temperatures