Trina Pfeiffer imagines a world where vehicles travel down roads paved with coal products, past structures built with coal products, through communities powered by coal-fired power plants and nuclear fuels manufactured with graphite made from coal.
As director of the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources' Center for Carbon Capture and Conversion, Pfeiffer is now watching that vision take physical shape at the Wyoming Innovation Center (WyIC) near Gillette, where construction crews are building a coal-to-products field demonstration plant she calls the largest coal products facility in the country.
"The new part is that we are actually building this," Pfeiffer said. "We talked about building it for a long time and we had some delays. There were some financial delays and there were some technical delays, but we figured it all out, and now we're actually constructing."
Finally Real
The project has progressed from bench-scale research to pilot testing to what Pfeiffer describes as the critical field demonstration phase.
"This project has been a long time coming," Pfeiffer said. "We started in 2016 with an idea of how we can repurpose coal, not just burning it, but using it for other resources, other products."
"We went from bench to pilot to now field demo," she said. "Wyoming is leading the way for coal products work when it comes to commercializing it."
Scott Quillinan, acting executive director of the School of Energy Resources, said the physical scale of the project drives home how far the research has come.
"The thermal oxidizer that's up there, it's like a 60-foot-tall unit. So it's really large scale," Quillinan said. "For me, really seeing this stuff grow up out of the lab, and then you get out there and you see what it looks like constructed in the field, that's the really neat part."
How It Works
The facility will be capable of processing eight to 10 tons of coal per day, producing intermediate materials that can be manufactured into asphalt products, building materials, agricultural soil amendments and nuclear-grade graphite.
Researchers settled on two upstream processes: pyrolysis and solvent extraction.
"The coal pyrolysis component takes coal, and it burns it in high temperature without oxygen, and you're making like a coal char," Quillinan said. "That coal char just breaks it down into basically carbon. And so that carbon is a really good building block for all of the construction materials that we build out of coal."
Those materials include fascia components for building exteriors and structural units that could replace conventional lumber.
"We're doing some fascia components that would go on the outside of a building, like a veneer," Quillinan said. "Structural units that kind of could take the place of 2-by-4s within a building."
The solvent extraction process, meanwhile, will extract petrochemicals from coal to produce asphalt binder, “that will then be used to pave a road out of coal,” he said.
Novel Uses
"The fact that we can pave roads with it is a real novel use," Pfeiffer said, noting that petroleum-based asphalt binder is becoming harder to source as refineries crack heavy crude to extract lighter products.
"We're providing another raw material that can step in and fill it,” she said.
The coal char produced through pyrolysis also shows promise as an agricultural amendment similar to biochar but at lower cost.
"So you can actually grow crops with this stuff too, because it helps with soil health,” added Pfeiffer.
For higher-value applications, researchers are working with BWXT on developing nuclear-grade graphite and exploring extraction of rare earth elements from coal.
"The big point of all of this is to use every molecule of the coal," Pfeiffer said. "We really think that you can use coal in a lot of different ways. Burning it, yeah, OK, fine. But everyone's been doing that for a long, long time. There's other uses for it."
Proving Viability
The demonstration plant is designed to show investors that the technology can scale to commercial level, said Pfeiffer.
"In July, we're going to start that puppy up and we're going to be making a lot of char and a lot of material in order to demonstrate that we can make this stuff at a much larger scale," Pfeiffer said. "So investors can see, yes, it is scalable. We can get engineering data to actually build the coal refinery — a big plant, if you will, a commercial unit."
Quillinan said companies are watching closely.
"Most companies that we've been talking to want us to get through this demonstration phase to show that it can be done at commercial levels," he said. "But there's tremendous interest in all of the products that are coming out of the coal refinery."
Construction Timeline
Construction of the pyrolysis portion of the coal refinery is nearing completion, with the pyrolyzer scheduled for delivery in spring and start-up anticipated in August. The solvent extraction portion is planned to begin construction in late 2026.
Quillinan said the facility is approximately 85% constructed. The university is requesting $2.09 million from the upcoming legislative session to cover inflationary costs and complete the project.
"With the finish line now in sight, continued and immediate support is more critical than ever to ensure this project remains on track," Quillinan said. "We are hopeful that the state will help to maintain our momentum and carry this work fully into operation."
Perfect Location
The Wyoming Innovation Center, managed by Energy Capital Economic Development, provides space adjacent to some of the largest coal mines in the Powder River Basin for scaling up laboratory research into commercially viable products.
"This is precisely what this facility was designed to support," said ECED CEO Rusty Bell. "As the largest project at WyIC, this initiative, alongside our other current tenancy hosting an SER-led project, exemplifies our mission to bridge the gap between research and commercialization utilizing Wyoming coal."
Visitors to the University of Wyoming campus can already see an example of what the technology produces.
"We do have the coal house that we've built," Quillinan said. "You can walk up to it and touch the coal bricks that were used to construct that demonstration building."
Industry Support
The project has drawn support from the coal industry itself. Kemmerer Operations LLC recently established the Kemmerer Mine Carbon Innovation and Technology Fund to support coal-to-graphite research, providing what Quillinan called a demonstration of industry confidence in the program.
"We are very grateful to Kemmerer Operations for their generous support," Quillinan said. "This gift underscores the importance of industry support, strategic partnerships and investment in driving high-impact research forward."
Once fully operational, the integrated facility in Gillette can be replicated and adapted for coal from other Wyoming basins, potentially providing new markets for mines facing closure.
Pfeiffer said the original motivation remains central to the work.
"The main point of what started all of this was we wanted to try to keep the mines open and everybody employed," she said. "This is a way to diversify the coal use. It's not going to replace the amount that you used to burn the coal. That's true. But if you diversify enough, you could really make a go of it, I think. And then the market doesn't have to just depend on who's in (federal) office."
"There are so many benefits resulting from these projects supporting both the energy and agricultural sectors in Wyoming, as well as new industries in manufacturing, processing and engineering," Pfeiffer said. "By constructing this integrated coal processing field demonstration plant at the Wyoming Innovation Center, we are not just testing technology — we are building a foundation for a diversified economy for Wyoming."
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
