Aiming to move more critical minerals processing and materials production into the United States, the U.S. Department of Energy has selected 19 projects to share $45.7 million in federal funding for pilot-scale and next-generation technologies meant to strengthen domestic supply chains.
While the United States hosts substantial mineral resources and a growing pipeline of projects tied to energy, defense, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing, it remains dependent on foreign sources for many of the processing and production steps needed to turn raw or secondary feedstocks into usable critical materials.
That gap has kept federal attention focused not only on mining, but on the technologies needed to recover, separate, refine, and manufacture strategic materials from a wider range of domestic sources, including ore, industrial waste, mine waste, recycled feedstocks, and other unconventional streams.
Moving from that supply-chain challenge into project funding, DOE’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation said the selections will support pilot-scale facilities for processing magnesium and rare earth elements, as well as earlier-stage technologies that could be used in critical materials production.
“Reshoring minerals production and processing will strengthen our domestic rare earth supply chains from end to end,” said Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson. “By ensuring the minerals that are mined in America can be processed in America and manufactured into American technologies, these investments will bolster America’s national security and energy independence.”
Structured through DOE’s Critical Material Innovation, Efficiency, and Alternatives funding opportunity, the federal support is aimed at developing domestic critical mineral supply from sources across the United States, including ore deposits, mine and industrial waste, and recycled materials.
The largest awards fall under DOE’s pilot-scale facility category, where selected projects are meant to advance rare earth separation and magnesium metal production toward pre-commercial and commercial-scale development.
A second group of selections falls under DOE’s next-generation technologies area, which supports bench-scale development of new approaches that could be used in the production, recovery, separation, or concentration of critical materials.
Those projects include work tied to graphite, lithium, nickel, cobalt, rare earth elements, manganese, silicon, and other materials, with feedstocks ranging from ore and brines to recycled batteries, coal waste, end-of-life magnets, industrial residues, and dilute wastewaters.
Selected projects are led by national laboratories, universities, research institutes, and private companies across the United States, with DOE and non-DOE project values ranging from $700,000 to $50.5 million.