Pulling rare earths out of coal waste with microbes and AI — under a framework aimed at states federal research money reaches less

1A resource inside the discard pile

Rare earth elements are indispensable to energy technology, advanced manufacturing and defense alike. The United States depends on foreign supply for much of it, though not for want of domestic material: abundant supplies sit locked inside coal mining waste and ash. The question is whether extraction from there can be made to pay. This project answers by handing the extraction to microbes and the search for conditions to AI.

2Closing the gap between bench and plant

1. 1Virtual assayPredicts and narrows down which feedstocks hold promise
2. 2Bioprocess digital twinEmbeds reinforcement-learning controllers and integrates with microgrid simulators
3. 3Bio-metallurgical purificationValidates the pathways that turn recovered elements into usable form
4. 4Closed evaluation loopIteratively assesses extraction performance with Shewanella oneidensis against techno-economic and life-cycle metrics

The phrase Virtual Pilot Plant captures the design. Testing a laboratory finding at real scale normally requires physical plant, with the time and cost that implies. Filling that gap with a computational model shortens the distance between bench and field. Building power constraints into the simulation reflects that the economics of recovery turn on energy consumption.

3The EPSCoR framework

The program is EPSCoR RII (Focused EPSCoR Collaborations). EPSCoR exists to raise research capacity in states where federal research funding concentrates less, and this award spans Alaska, Montana and Wyoming. In fields where the resource itself is geographically uneven, the places holding the resource and the places holding research capacity need not coincide. This framework works on that mismatch. Of the NSF awards this site holds as of 2026-09-02, EPSCoR RII accounts for 8.

4Read as a supply chain question

The description frames domestic recovery in terms of securing a supply chain. That it extends past technical proof into industry-aligned micro-credentials, a tri-state field course and a compliant university recharge facility follows from recovery technology needing both people and equipment on the ground to actually run.

The records this site holds as of 2026-09-02 span 37 states, and an award structured as a multi-state collaboration is a case where geography is itself part of the problem. Amounts are the obligated amount as of the check date and may change.