DOE Program To Extract Minerals And Nutrients From Wastewater Is Industry's Latest Sustainability Effort

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) announced in early November its allocation of $25 million, spread across 10 different projects seeking economically viable ways to extract critical minerals and nutrients from wastewater. The allocations are part of a broader DOE initiative “to advance and scale mining, processing, and manufacturing technologies across key stages of the critical minerals and materials supply chains.”

Per an August DOE release, the ARPA-E’s Realize Energy-rich Compound Opportunities Valorizing Extraction from Refuse waters (RECOVER) program “aims to enable the U.S. to reduce its dependence on critical mineral imports and replace them with secure, domestic sources,” as well as reinforce the nation’s energy independence and industrial competitiveness. These efforts are intended to complement traditional mining by collecting critical minerals from domestic wastewater systems that would otherwise be discarded.