SHERIDAN -- At the rear of the Ramaco iCam facility are stacks of cardboard boxes holding 120 tubes of dirt. This dirt could possibly be the beginnings of a major industry for Wyoming.
These tubes of dirt are cores that came out of holes that were drilled in the Brook Mine, a coal mine near Sheridan.
One of Ramaco’s partners, National Energy Technology Lab in Albany, Oregon, was interested in developing a domestic supply of rare earth elements. The researchers at the lab did some analysis on the samples and concluded that the Brook Mine may hold the largest unconventional deposit of rare earth elements in the United States.
Rare Earth Guns
China now controls the bulk of the planet’s rare earth elements, which are becoming increasingly important for electric vehicles, wind turbines and defense applications.
The iCam lab is using X-ray fluorescent guns to determine more precisely the rare earth elements in the core samples.
Grant Hazle, lab manager for Ramaco Carbon, told Cowboy State Daily the guns took a year to get, and the company was lucky to get in before a rush of orders for them as other labs work to find domestic sources of rare earth elements.
A big reason it takes so long to get the guns is they require rare earth elements.
“To produce the guns to find earths, we need rare earths. But we are short on rare earths. So it's a little cat and mouse problem here,” Hazle said.
Literally Everywhere
Despite their name, the minerals aren’t that rare.
“They're literally everywhere,” Hazle said. “They’re more common than gold. They just don’t end up in veins like gold does.”
The challenge is finding them in quantities that can be mined economically.
The estimates at the Brook Mine are between 600,000 and 900,000 tons of total rare earths that could come out of it.
“It would greatly benefit the domestic supply,” Hazle said.
There’s a lot of research that needs to be done before that’s realized, and the commercial feasibility isn’t certain.
“Any new mine project, especially one involving emerging technology, is fraught with uncertainty,” said Ramaco CEO Randy Atkins said in a statement announcing the Oregon lab’s determination.
Too Valuable To Burn
There’s very little rare earth elements found in the coal itself. It’s the clay layers around the coal that are holding this valuable resource.
There’s a long road before Ramaco is realizing any commercial production, but Atkins told Cowboy State Daily he believes there’s a lot of value to be had in coal, even as electricity plants turn to natural gas.
“I have been the industry’s cheerleader in trying to find alternative uses for coal,” Atkins said. “My motto has always been that coal is too valuable to burn.”
Atkins said that the concentrations of rare earth elements at the Brook Mine core samples are in the particularly prized magnetic heavy rare earths.
At the quantities they believe are to be found at the site, it would go a long way to satisfying the Department of Defense’s requirements, Atkins said.
Synthetic Graphite
Another project at the iCore facility is also aimed at alleviating America’s reliance on China.
Graphite is a material used in electric vehicle batteries, and it’s one of the largest components in the battery.
China produces 80% of the world’s supply, and it controls almost all graphite processing.
“It’s very important that we develop a domestic source,” Charles Hill, director of innovation for Ramaco Carbon, told Cowboy State Daily.
Hill is working on a project that takes coal and makes synthetic graphite out of it. Hill also is developing carbon fiber materials that would potentially be as strong as steel, but much lighter.
If the research is successful and results in commercial production, it would not only provide a domestic source for the material, it would be another use for coal.
Headquartered In Wyoming
Atkins doesn’t call it coal, though. He prefers the term carbon ore. Atkins said Ramaco is the fastest growing company in the carbon-ore space.
“We are also the only company in our industry that has really got a singular focus on creating transitional uses for coal in a higher technology area,” Atkins said.
And it’s happening right here in Wyoming.
Atkins said an underappreciated aspect is that Ramaco is, he believes, the only public company that headquartered in Wyoming.
