Mary Anne Alvin

The United States is heavily dependent on imports from China and elsewhere for critical rare earth minerals and materials that are key to our national defense and the domestic production of electric vehicles, solar panels, hydrogen fuel cells and electronic devices.

Mary Anne Alvin of the Department of Energy is leading an innovative government initiative that is tackling this problem head-on through five first-of-a-kind projects that are beginning to produce rare earth and other critical metals from tons of coal waste, ash and acid mine drainage.

“Mary Anne’s vision and determination has set the country on the path toward metal and material self-sufficiency,” said Evan Granite, a DOE senior technical adviser. “Her prescient work has laid the foundation for all current federal government efforts in critical minerals and materials research and will lead to greater economic security for the United States.”

The United States currently imports more than 80% of its rare earth elements, but these materials naturally occur in our nation’s domestic coal, coal waste and coal by-products that have the potential to provide a vast untapped resource.

“What Mary Anne has accomplished is significant,” said Constantine Karayannopoulus, an expert on rare earth materials. “There was almost zero domestic production when she started, and she has managed to bring people from academic and industry together to address this critical issue.”

The federally funded projects overseen by Alvin involve advanced bench- and pilot-scale testing to improve the economic viability of extracting rare earth minerals from coal waste, ash and acid mine drainage, and experimenting with different refining technologies. The work also has the potential environmental benefit of helping remediate legacy mining and energy waste from coal ash ponds and acid mine drainage sites across the country.

The five projects are designed to set the stage for near-future commercialization of the rare earth extraction processes with the hope of meeting increasing U.S. domestic demands by 2035.

Granite said Alvin has been working on the issue of extracting rare earth elements from coal waste and ash for more than a decade and initially faced “a lot of pushback.” He noted that she persisted, garnered support and overcame the internal resistance to demonstrate that the initiative will have significant national security, economic and environmental impact.

“The program is now very large, and Mary Anne positioned the Department of Energy to undertake this work,” Granite said.

In addition to the DOE, the Department of Defense is now funding rare earth and critical metal projects geared toward vital national defense issues that originated under Alvin’s leadership.

Alvin said her greatest reward is “knowing that my technical contribution may have an impact on our nation and its critical needs.”

“It has been the highlight of my public service career to work with so many motivated and enthusiastic individuals from academia, industry and the national laboratories to expand cutting-edge technology in the areas of domestic and critical mineral production,” Alvin said.