South-central Missouri’s historic role as an important player in mining and mineral processing could get a boost from a recent $29 million federal grant to support new approaches to minerals processing with the aim of making the United States less reliant on foreign countries for so-called “critical” minerals.
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) recently announced the $29 million Tech Hubs grant “to implement two projects that aim to position south-central Missouri as a global leader in critical minerals processing to provide the materials needed to support battery technology.”
The grant establishes the Critical Minerals and Materials for Advanced Energy Tech Hub, or CM2AE, which encompasses a 14-county region of south-central Missouri. It is one of 31 Tech Hubs created nationwide “to strengthen U.S. economic and national security with investments … to become globally competitive in the technologies and industries of the future,” according to the EDA.
Dent and Phelps counties are included in the CM2AE region, as are Carter, Crawford, Howell, Iron, Madison, Oregon, Reynolds, Shannon, St. Francois, Ste. Genevieve, Texas and Washington counties. Many of these counties are home to —or once were home to — mining operations.
The CM2AE effort will be led by Missouri S&T, where funds will be used to build an 18,000-square-foot space for university researchers and industry partners to develop and test ways to extract and process critical minerals—those minerals that are deemed essential to the nation’s economic or national security, according to federal definitions. These include minerals that are abundant in south-central Missouri, such as cobalt and nickel. Some of the materials are trapped in waste products — like slag heaps or recycled battery waste — that will require new methods of extraction.
The facility is expected to take two years to complete, but once it is up and running, researchers at S&T, working with corporate partners, will be able to come up with new ways to sustainably extract certain minerals and rare earth elements. Missouri S&T researchers estimate enough cobalt exists in the region to meet 100% of U.S. demand for battery manufacturing.
The Tech Hubs Program is funded through the CHIPS and Science Act, a 2022 law that authorized roughly $280 billion in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States.
“To out-innovate and out-compete the rest of the world, we need to ensure we’re investing in the industries of the future that will drive American innovation, manufacturing, and workforce to succeed in a 21st century economy—that’s how America maintains its competitive edge,” Gina Raimondo, who served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Joe Biden, said in announcing the grant award Jan. 14.
The CM2AE is led by Dr. Kwame Awuah-Offei, chair and Union Pacific/Rocky Mountain Energy professor of mining and explosives engineering at Missouri S&T.
“We are grateful to the EDA for selecting Missouri S&T for this award, as it has huge economic development implications for our region and could ultimately lead to significant changes for the critical minerals supply chain for the entire nation,” Awuah-Offei says.
In materials submitted to the EDA last February, consortium members outlined the critical minerals and materials challenges the Tech Hub is designed to address. According to the narrative, the U.S. imports $102 billion worth of processed mineral materials—mostly critical minerals—that ultimately support $3.62 trillion in economic activity. The U.S. relies on imports for 38 of the 50 minerals the federal government has designated critical. Those 38 imported minerals include 26 “that are effectively monopolized by China,” a fact that poses a thread to the global supply chain for high-tech energy and power systems.
But the local Tech Hub possesses minerals that, if extracted and properly processed, could reduce America’s reliance on imported minerals.
That’s where the new research facility at S&T comes in.
Dr. Michael Moats, professor and chair of materials science and engineering at S&T and one of the test bed project leads, says the facility will take about two years to construct. It will house several pilot-scale pieces of equipment focused on different aspects of hydrometallurgical processing and analysis, which will support research and development efforts, as well as the region’s workforce development.
S&T has expertise in hydrometallurgical processing, which is considered less harmful to the environment than traditional pyrometallurgical (smelter) processes.
Moats says the new lab “will be the first of its kind.”
“Designed to unlock natural and recycled resources, it will enable rapid testing of potential technologies through adaptable equipment configurations and simulations of future facilities,” Moats says.
“Researchers and consortium members will focus on various primary and secondary sources sourced from mines, slag heaps and black mass from battery recycling,” he adds.
Within 10 years, Dr. Lana Alagha, co-lead of the test bed and a Robert H. Quenon Associate Professor of Mining Engineering at S&T, envisions the work having a larger effect on the nation’s critical minerals mining, refining and recycling in general.
While much of the focus will be on the research at S&T, Tech Hub leaders also are to create a governing structure to involve various constituents in the region and keep the effort on track. The EDA wants to make sure the effort addresses “the national security imperative to capture market share of critical minerals and materials for advanced energy manufacturing.”
Partners in the CM2AE Tech Hub consortium include private-sector partners Caldera Holdings, the Doe Run Co. and U.S. Strategic Metals, as well as state agencies, community organizations in the 14-county region, and educational partners Lincoln University, Mineral Area College, St. Charles Community College and the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
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