This week, HG Ventures, an investment arm of The Heritage Group, and American Rare Earth LLC, a subsidiary of the American Resources Corporation (NASDAQ: AREC), announced they are teaming up to scale up the recycling of batteries, magnets and e-waste with the goal of recovering and supplying critical minerals and rare earth metals to US and global markets.
Mining rare earths, essential elements to realizing an electrified economy, can be challenging as materials needed are either not yet mined, or are latent, stranded, for example, in old coal mines – environmental legacy liabilities spread all over North America.
The Heritage Group, which owns Retriev Technologies, the largest lithium-ion battery recycler in North America, and American Resources, one of the largest owners of mining infrastructure and related assets in Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, are aiming to solve this problem via the proxy partnership by using legacy tailings from coal mines in the vast Appalachia coal mining region of the eastern US to strip out rare earths and recycle them in a new facility being built in Noblesville, Indiana.
American Resources in November 2021 announced it received the final permit approval for its initial rare earth and critical element isolation and purification facility currently being constructed and set to be operational in Q1 2022.
For the rest of this article: https://www.mining.com/recycling-plant-aims-to-turn-us-coal-country-into-rare-earth-powerhouse/