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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 703 records · Page 39
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2009

An Intelligent Archive Testbed Incorporating Data Mining

Many significant advances have occurred during the last two decades in remote sensing instrumentation, computation, storage, and communication technology. A series of Earth observing satellites have been launched by U.S. and international agencies and have been operating and collecting global data on a regular basis. These advances have created a data rich environment for scientific research and applications. NASA s Earth Observing System (EOS) Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has been operational since August 1994 with support for pre-EOS data. Currently, EOSDIS supports all the EOS missions including Terra (1999), Aqua (2002), ICESat (2002) and Aura (2004). EOSDIS has been effectively capturing, processing and archiving several terabytes of standard data products each day. It has also been distributing these data products at a rate of several terabytes per day to a diverse and globally distributed user community (Ramapriyan et al. 2009). There are other NASA-sponsored data system activities including measurement-based systems such as the Ocean Data Processing System and the Precipitation Processing system, and several projects under the Research, Education and Applications Solutions Network (REASoN), Making Earth Science Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs), and the Advancing Collaborative Connections for Earth-Sun System Science (ACCESS) programs. Together, these activities provide a rich set of resources constituting a value chain for users to obtain data at various levels ranging from raw radiances to interdisciplinary model outputs. The result has been a significant leap in our understanding of the Earth systems that all humans depend on for their enjoyment, livelihood, and survival. The trend in the community today is towards many distributed sets of providers of data and services. Despite this, visions for the future include users being able to locate, fuse and utilize data with location transparency and high degree of interoperability, and being able to convert data to information and usable knowledge in an efficient, convenient manner, aided significantly by automation (Ramapriyan et al. 2004; NASA 2005). We can look upon the distributed provider environment with capabilities to convert data to information and to knowledge as an Intelligent Archive in the Context of a Knowledge Building system (IA-KBS). Some of the key capabilities of an IA-KBS are: Virtual Product Generation, Significant Event Detection, Automated Data Quality Assessment, Large-Scale Data Mining, Dynamic Feedback Loop, and Data Discovery and Efficient Requesting (Ramapriyan et al. 2004).

Ramapriyan, H.↗
NASA NTRS2012

In-Situ Wire Damage Detection System

An In-Situ Wire Damage Detection System (ISWDDS) has been developed that is capable of detecting damage to a wire insulation, or a wire conductor, or to both. The system will allow for realtime, continuous monitoring of wiring health/integrity and reduce the number of false negatives and false positives while being smaller, lighter in weight, and more robust than current systems. The technology allows for improved safety and significant reduction in maintenance hours for aircraft, space vehicles, satellites, and other critical high-performance wiring systems for industries such as energy production and mining. The integrated ISWDDS is comprised of two main components: (1) a wire with an innermost core conductor, an inner insulation film, a conductive layer or inherently conductive polymer (ICP) covering the inner insulation film, an outermost insulation jacket; and (2) smart connectors and electronics capable of producing and detecting electronic signals, and a central processing unit (CPU) for data collection and analysis. The wire is constructed by applying the inner insulation films to the conductor, followed by the outer insulation jacket. The conductive layer or ICP is on the outer surface of the inner insulation film. One or more wires are connected to the CPU using the smart connectors, and up to 64 wires can be monitored in real-time. The ISWDDS uses time domain reflectometry for damage detection. A fast-risetime pulse is injected into either the core conductor or conductive layer and referenced against the other conductor, producing transmission line behavior. If either conductor is damaged, then the signal is reflected. By knowing the speed of propagation of the pulse, and the time it takes to reflect, one can calculate the distance to and location of the damage.

Williams, Martha↗
DOE OSTI2025

Porous carbon from lignocellulosic biomass with emphasis on corn plant waste residue for energy storage

The rising global demand for sustainable energy storage materials has driven the search for environmentally friendly and cost-effective electrode options. Hydrothermal conversion of lignocellulosic biomass has gained attention due to its low energy requirements and operation at relatively low temperatures, presenting a green alternative to traditional thermochemical methods. The resulting solid product, hydrochar, has been used as an adsorbent and soil amendment; however, chemical/thermal treatment significantly enhances its physical properties. These structural modifications transform hydrochar into an effective porous carbon electrode, offering abundant sites for electrolyte ion transport, critical for high-performance devices like supercapacitors and batteries. This review first discusses various waste biomass and sustainable feedstocks available globally. It compares two primary thermochemical conversion techniques, pyrolysis and hydrothermal carbonization/liquefaction, and examines their respective solid products, biochar and hydrochar, analyzing differences in their physical and chemical characteristics. The focus is placed on hydrochar, summarizing activation methods to produce porous carbon suitable for energy storage applications. Additionally, this review will include a dedicated section on the application of porous carbon derived from corn plant waste residue, considering that corn is one of the most abundant crops grown worldwide, which makes it an important and promising source for sustainable porous carbon production. The role of machine learning models in optimizing hydrothermal processes to produce high-quality hydrochar is also discussed, emphasizing how data-driven approaches can streamline process development. Finally, the review identifies the current challenges and prospects for lignocellulosic biomass-derived porous carbon as a sustainable electrode material in next-generation energy storage technologies.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
NASA NTRS1985

Seasat data applications in ocean industries

It is pointed out that the world population expansion and resulting shortages of food, minerals, and fuel have focused additional attention on the world's oceans. In this context, aspects of weather prediction and the monitoring/prediction of long-range climatic anomalies become more important. In spite of technological advances, the commercial ocean industry and the naval forces suffer now from inadequate data and forecast products related to the oceans. The Seasat Program and the planned Navy-Remote Oceanographic Satellite System (N-ROSS) represent major contributions to improved observational coverage and the processing needed to achieve better forecasts. The Seasat Program was initiated to evaluate the effectiveness of the remote sensing of oceanographic phenomena from a satellite platform. Possible oceanographic satellite applications are presented in a table, and the impact of Seasat data on industry sectors is discussed. Attention is given to offshore oil development, deep-ocean mining, fishing, and marine transportation.

Montgomery, D. R.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Vacuum Sintering of Highland Simulant CSM-LHT-1G

Sintering of lunar regolith is a process of interest to consolidate the ubiquitous granular material in durable structures on the lunar surface such as platforms, landing/launch pads, roads, and foundations for long-term robotic and human activities. Many publications do not report quantitative assessment of the effects of processing conditions on the strength properties of the sintered products. The work presented is an investigation into such effects on a carefully selected simulant, CSM-LHT-1G prepared for high temperature processing to eliminate undesired components that would not be present from lunar materials. Careful experiments under vacuum were conducted to identify the relevant factors that dominate the properties and the quality of the sintered product. CSM-LHT-1G simulant is a variant of the CSM-LHT-1 lunar highland simulant produced by Colorado School of Mines. The original mineralogical composition of CSM-LHT-1 (70 wt.% Greenspar, 30 wt.% Merriam Crater basalt) was modified to obtain a 30 wt.% glass content with the addition of NU-LHT-5M glass balanced with pyroxene (augite) to yield CSM-LHT-1G.

Vacuum Sintering↗
DOE OSTI2022

Sampling and Characterization of Coal Basins as an Alternative Rare-Earth Element Resource

Conference presentation at TechConnect World Innovation Conference & Expo, Washington, D.C., June 13–15, 2022. The University of North Dakota (UND) through the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) and the Institute for Energy Studies teamed with the University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research, Microbeam Technologies Inc., the Kentucky Geological Survey (KGS), the North Dakota Geological Survey (NDGS), and the mining industry to execute a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) to obtain and characterize samples of U.S. domestic precombustion coal and coal-related materials with a minimum concentration of 300 parts per million (ppm) total rare-earth elements (TREEs) as the material is removed from the ground, with no processing other than drying.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
NASA NTRS2006

A Case for Developing a Ground Based Replication of the Earth, Moon and Mars Spaceflight Infrastructure

When the systems are developed and in place to provide the services needed to operate en route and on the Lunar and Martian surfaces, an Earth based replication will need to be in place for the safety and protection of mission success. The replication will entail all aspects of the flight configuration end to end but will not include any closed loop systems. This would replicate the infrastructure from Lunar and Martian robots, manned surface excursions, through man and unmanned terrestrial bases, through the various types of communication systems and technologies, manned and un-manned space vehicles (large and small), to Earth based systems and control centers. An Earth based replicated infrastructure will enable checkout and test of new technologies, hardware, software updates and upgrades and procedures without putting humans and missions at risk. Analysis of events, what ifs and trouble resolution could be played out on the ground to remove as much risk as possible from any type of proposed change to flight operational systems. With adequate detail, it is possible that failures could be predicted with a high probability and action taken to eliminate failures. A major factor in any mission to the Moon and to Mars is the complexity of systems, interfaces, processes, their limitations, associated risks and the factor of the unknown including the development by many contractors and NASA centers. The need to be able to introduce new technologies over the life of the program requires an end to end test bed to analyze and evaluate these technologies and what will happen when they are introduced into the flight system. The ability to analyze system behaviors end to end under varying conditions would enhance safety e.g. fault tolerances. This analysis along with the ability to mine data from the development environment (e.g. test data), flight ops and modeling/simulations data would provide a level of information not currently available to operations and astronauts. In this paper we will analyze the beginnings of such a replication and what it could do in terms of reducing risk in the near term for development. We will analyze the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) test lab which has to a large extent accomplished this replication for the SSME and has been highly successful in analyzing hardware and software problems and changes. The cost of replicating the flight system as proposed here could be very high if attempted as an afterthought. We will describe the initial steps for the development of a replication of this infrastructure starting with the communication infrastructure. The Constellation of Labs (CofL) under the Command, Control, Communication and Information (C3I) project for the NASA Exploration Initiative will provide the initial foundation upon which to base this replication. Simply put, there is very little margin for error in high latency situations e.g. en-route to/from Mars or in an autonomous process on the Lunar far side. Any thought out approach to reduce risk and increase safety needs to be accomplished end to end with the actual systems configuration.

Bradford, Robert N.↗
DOE OSTI2026

Integrating Carbon Capture, Utilization, & Sequestration into Chemical Pulp Mills

The U.S. pulp and paper industry presents a unique and largely untapped opportunity for large- scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Unlike most industrial sectors, pulp mills rely heavily on biomass, meaning that much of their carbon emissions originate from atmospheric CO₂ that was recently captured by plants. If this biogenic CO₂ can be captured and permanently stored, pulp mills can be transformed from carbon emitters into net carbon removal facilities. This project was motivated by that opportunity and aimed to develop and evaluate integrated, low-cost strategies for capturing, utilizing, and sequestering CO₂ within existing chemical pulping operations. The scope of this work focused on four complementary innovations designed to integrate seamlessly into kraft pulp mill infrastructure: (1) in situ CO₂ capture within the recovery cycle, (2) oxy-fuel retrofitting of the rotary lime kiln to produce a high-purity CO₂ stream, (3) ex situ CO₂ capture and mineralization using pulp mill residues (dregs, grits, and lime mud), and (4) beneficial reuse of these residues as mineral carbonate fertilizers. The project combined process modeling, laboratory experimentation, life cycle assessment (LCA), and field trials to evaluate the technical feasibility, economic viability, and environmental impact of these approaches. The results demonstrate that pulp mills can serve as effective platforms for carbon removal when equipped with integrated carbon capture systems. Process modeling showed that combining sodium spiking with oxy-fuel calcination significantly enhances CO₂ capture efficiency while reducing costs by up to 31% compared to conventional configurations. Experimental work further revealed that calcination behavior in high-CO₂ environments differs substantially from traditional systems, leading to the development of a new kinetic model that predicts reaction rates under these conditions. This model provides essential design guidance for next-generation decarbonized lime kilns. In parallel, the project demonstrated that alkaline mineral residues generated during pulping operations can be repurposed as a sustainable alternative to agricultural lime. Across a wide range of soils in the southeastern United States, these materials performed equivalently to commercial lime in adjusting soil pH while offering lower greenhouse gas emissions and reduced cost. Field and greenhouse studies confirmed that crop and tree growth responses were comparable, supporting their viability as a drop-in replacement. This co-product pathway provides a practical utilization strategy that offsets costs and improves overall system economics. A major contribution of this project is the first comprehensive life cycle assessment of carbon removal in pulp and paper systems across multiple system boundaries. Results show that retrofitted mills can achieve carbon removal efficiencies ranging from 12% to 92%, depending on how the system is defined. This finding highlights a critical issue in carbon accounting: reported performance is highly sensitive to methodological choices. By explicitly quantifying these differences, this work provides valuable guidance for policymakers, carbon registries, and project developers working to standardize carbon removal metrics. From a commercialization perspective, the technologies investigated in this project are well- aligned with existing industrial infrastructure, minimizing the need for entirely new facilities. 3 DE-EE0009413 Industry engagement throughout the project—including collaboration with pulp and paper companies, equipment manufacturers, and carbon removal developers—has accelerated the transition from research to deployment. Notably, a commercial developer is actively pursuing carbon capture projects at pulp mills in the southeastern United States and has cited this research as a contributing foundation. The emergence of voluntary carbon markets and long-term offtake agreements further strengthens the business case for implementation. The broader public benefits of this work are significant. By enabling large-scale carbon removal using existing industrial systems, this approach offers a near-term pathway to reduce atmospheric CO₂ concentrations while supporting domestic manufacturing and rural economies. The reuse of industrial residues as fertilizers reduces reliance on mined materials, lowers costs for farmers, and decreases environmental impacts associated with conventional lime production. In addition, the project has supported workforce development by training graduate students and researchers in carbon capture technologies, helping to build capacity in a critical area of national interest. In conclusion, this project demonstrates that integrated carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration in pulp mills is both technically feasible and economically promising. By combining process innovation, experimental validation, and systems-level analysis, the work advances the understanding of how biomass-based industries can contribute to climate mitigation. The findings provide a strong foundation for commercial deployment and offer a scalable solution for transforming a major U.S. industry into a source of durable carbon removal.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Accelerating Laboratory-Based, All-Solid-State Battery Research and Development: Industrially Relevant Small-Batch Dry-Processing, Small and Low-Cost Test Fixtures, and Short-Tolerant Separators

This work presents improvements to mixing (for dry-processed electrodes), separator robustness, and cell testing jigs for all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs). These developments combine synergistically to enable rapid research and development of ASSB catholytes. A mechanical "kneader" is designed and built which emulates the mixing and fibrillation of poly-tetrafluoroethylene binder that occurs in industrially relevant twin-screw extruders. A modest improvement in the mixing and dispersion catholyte materials is observed using micro-resolution X-ray computed tomography (X-ray CT). Catholytes are paired with an In-metal anode and separated by a novel, dual-layer, polyaramid-fiber-supported, sulfide-solid electrolyte (Li6 PS5 Cl) separator. This separator achieves high short tolerance which enabled a 95% success rate across 20 attempted cells and to date over 100 successful cells have been built. ASSBs were tested in a 2032 coin-cell format. Simultaneous cycling of a large number of cells is further enabled by a compact and low cost (~ 38 USD per jig) pressure application jig of which 100 have been constructed to date. The utility of these advances is demonstrated through a brief study on the effect cathode-side conductive carbon and current collector type has on capacity and rate performance.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Final Scientific/Technical Report: Real Time Particle Size and Settling Velocity for In-Situ Monitoring of Deep-Sea Polymetallic Nodule Mining

In the coming decade, it is anticipated that deep-sea mining activities will commence throughout the deep ocean, at depths around 4000-6000m where vast deposits of baseball-sized rocks called polymetallic nodules lay on the seabed. These nodules contain resources such as cobalt, copper and nickel which are needed to produce batteries for electric vehicles. Collector machines driving on the seabed and gathering these nodules will stir up clouds of sediment, and there is concern about how the resulting concentration of sediment in the near-bottom ocean water will affect deep and mid-ocean biology. There is currently no technology capable of comprehensively monitoring the concentrations and properties of stirred up sediment in the deep. This project addressed this critical gap by developing a deep-sea particle measurement system (Real-Time Size and Settling Velocity, RTSSV) that uses a multi-camera high-resolution video imaging system, with accompanying image processing, to measure the concentration, size distribution and settling speed of sediment. Importantly, these measurements are made in-situ, so that delicate sediment aggregates will not be disturbed, as is the case when collecting samples at depth to be measured in the lab. The instrument can be mounted on a variety of established deep-sea platforms such as moorings, AUVs and ROVs, providing data in near real time, where the key measurements need to be made—from the source of the sediment disturbance and throughout the resulting plume—vital for determining if deep-sea mining can be done in an environmentally responsible manner. The developed system (RTSSV) will possess the only such capability worldwide, giving a US-based group a substantial competitive advantage as this newly evolving global industry develops. As added value, the technology will also have widespread application to the offshore oil and gas industry, dredging industry, and to sediment science research.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2024

The Role of Data Filtering in Open Source Software Ranking and Selection

Faced with more than 100M open source projects, a more manageable small subset is needed for most empirical investigations. More than half of the research papers in leading venues investigated filtering projects by some measure of popularity with explicit or implicit arguments that unpopular projects are not of interest, may not even represent "real" software projects, or that less popular projects are not worthy of study. However, such filtering may have enormous effects on the results of the studies if and precisely because the sought-out response or prediction is in any way related to the filtering criteria.This paper exemplifies the impact of this common practice on research outcomes, specifically how filtering of software projects on GitHub based on inherent characteristics affects the assessment of their popularity. Using a dataset of over 100,000 repositories, we used multiple regression to model the number of stars -a commonly used proxy for popularity- based on factors such as the number of commits, the duration of the project, the number of authors and the number of core developers. Our control model included the entire dataset, while a second filtered model considered only projects with ten or more authors. The results indicated that while certain characteristics of the repository consistently predict popularity, the filtering process significantly alters the relationships between these characteristics and the response. We found that the number of commits exhibited a positive correlation with popularity in the control sample but showed a negative correlation in the filtered sample. These findings highlight the potential biases introduced by data filtering and emphasize the need for careful sample selection in empirical research of mining software repositories. We recommend that empirical work should either analyze complete datasets such as World of Code, or employ stratified random sampling from a complete dataset to ensure that filtering is not biasing the results.

Malviya Thakur, Addi↗
DOE OSTI2023

Technical Feasibility of Recovering Critical Minerals from Oil and Gas Industry Produced Water

Economic recovery of critical minerals from solid and liquid streams produced from natural resource extraction operations including Oil and Gas production, Mining, geothermal, and other industries can help alleviate shortage of the minerals important to industry. It is important to develop techniques for extraction that can be utilized at large scale to be economically viable, and to minimize waste products that require special disposal procedures. NETL and Participant will collaborate to develop and evaluate at the lab-scale, a process to recover and concentrate critical minerals from oil and gas industry produced water using a combination of physical and chemical methods, so that it may be converted into a valuable product. This effort promotes a circular economy by converting a waste stream into marketable products.

02 PETROLEUM↗
DOE OSTI2025

Solar Cell Performance after Exfoliation Using Sonic Liftoff

Removing grown device layers from a GaAs substrate is an essential aspect of reducing costs of III–V photovoltaics. While many methods of device layer removal have been explored, Sonic Lift‐off (SLO) demonstrates novel control of the stress conditions within the substrate during exfoliation. By utilizing acoustic energy, this technique allows for a lower maximum stress required to fully lift‐off layers from a substrate. We demonstrate that this technique results in no damage to inverted‐grown and upright‐grown exfoliated devices. The inverted device demonstrated an efficiency of 26.8% after SLO in comparison to 26.5% for a traditionally‐processed cell, and the upright device showed a 22.0% efficiency after SLO. The SLO process has been shown to produce exfoliated, damage‐free devices and opens the door for substrate reuse to reduce the cost of III–V photovoltaics.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Bacterial Biomining Rare Earth Elements in Abandoned Coal Mine Drainage: Solubilization and Sequestration

Bacteria can be used to biomine rare earth elements (REEs) domestically from abandoned coal-mine drainage (AMD) solids. Pennsylvania has ~11,000 abandoned mines, with ~500 AMD passive remediation systems that precipitate AMD REE rich solids onsite. In passive systems, REEs, co-precipitate with manganese (Mn), accumulating as solids that can produce a valuable leachate when resolubilized. REEs like lanthanum (La) are used in battery technology. Microbial metabolic changes that co-resolubilize Mn and REEs could result in an affordable release process that does not require chemical additives and the select sequestering of REEs like La allow for the selective purification from a mixed REE composition. Currently, the microbial mechanisms that contribute to mass REE resolubilization and selective sequestration are poorly understood. We have isolated bacteria (Bacillus mycoides JR07 and Bacillus pseudomycoides KB7) that solubilize Mn oxide, La oxide, and AMD solids by acidogenesis. We have determined that isolates JR07 and KB7 solubilize the La from AMD PRS solids by their production of organic acids. Preliminary results show methylotrophic bacterial isolate B3 can take up soluble La(III), giving an avenue to purification of La from a rich REE leachate. Determining the microbial metabolism and genes involved in the mass resolubilization of REEs and selective biomining of La(III) is crucial to optimize the biomining of AMD solids. Our work addresses the growing need to develop novel REE recovery methods from domestic sources.

microbiology↗
DOE OSTI2025

Laser Ablation for Low-Cost Multijunction III-V Solar Cell Mesa Isolations

Eliminating photolithography from solar cell processing is a significant opportunity for cost reduction for III-V solar cells. In this work, we test femtosecond laser ablation and scribing as an alternative to contact photolithography and wet chemical etching for mesa isolation, when processing multijunction cells. We demonstrate that upright multijunction solar cells isolated by using the laser as a scribe to cleave through the substrate had virtually no performance loss when compared to a baseline cell processed with photolithography. By contrast, cells isolated by laser ablating through the active layers have performance losses that cannot be fully eliminated with post-processing etches. This demonstration of photolithography-free mesa isolation with no performance losses is promising for less expensive III-V manufacturing.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS2011

A Review of Lunar Regolith Excavation Robotic Device Prototypes

The excavation of lunar regolith is desirable for use as a feedstock for oxygen production processes as well as civil engineering purposes and for the fabrication of parts and structures. This is known as In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). More recently, there has been mounting evidence that water ice exists at the poles of the Moon, buried in the regolith where thermally stable conditions exist. This means that regolith excavation will be required to mine the water ice which is believed to be. mixed in with the regolith, or bonded to it. The mined water ice can then be electrolyzed to produce hydrogen and oxygen propellants which could form the basis of a cis-lunar transportation system using in-situ derived propellants. In 2007, the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) sponsored a Lunar Regolith Excavation Competition as part of its Centennial Challenges program, The competition was not won and it was held again in 2008 and 2009, when it was won by a university team. A $500,000 prize was awarded to the winning team by NASA. In 2010, NASA continued the competition as a spinoff of the Centennial Challenges, which is restricted to university participation only. This competition is known as the "Lunabotics Mining Competition" and is hosted by NASA at Kennedy Space Center. Twenty three American university teams competed in the 2010 Lunabotics Mining Competition. The competition was held again in May 2011 with over 60 teams registered, including international participation. The competition will be held again in May 2012 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. . This paper contains a thorough review of the various regolith eX,cavation robotic device prototypes that competed in these NASA competitions, and will. classify the machines and their methods of excavation to document the variety of ideas that were spawned and built to compete at these events. It is hoped that documentation of these robots will serve to help future robotic excavation designers and provide a historical reference for future lunar mining machine endeavors.

Mueller, Robert P.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Recovery of Rare Earth Elements (REEs) from Coal Mine Drainage, Phase 2

Phase 1 research identified a two-step refining train, acid leaching of AMD precipitate feed followed by solvent extraction (SX), to produce a 2% TREE product. For the Phase 2 bench scale system, the objective was to get the acid leaching step to operate in batch-mode with sufficient storage capacity to feed an aqueous, enriched REE liquor to a pilot SX plant operating in continuous-mode at a feed rate capable of producing 3 g/hr 2% TREE. Important process variables included feed rate, extractant makeup, flowsheet configuration, and stripping conditions. Operating parameters were optimized through a feedback-capable SCADA system configured for the SX bench scale plant. These conditions were met and exceeded. TREE grades approaching 90% were produced while our Techno-Economic Assessment indicated highly favorable economic returns. The project led to the design of a pilot facility for producing roughly 500 kg/TREE/year. That plant is now in the procurement stage with constructed expected to begin in late 2020.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗