Extraction of rare earth elements (REEs) from fly ash and bottom ash of SaskPower's Poplar River thermal power plants

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SaskPower is a provincial Crown Corporation and is the principal electricity supplier in Saskatchewan.SaskPower generates more than 3,214 megawatts (MW) of electricity from its facilities, which include threecoal-fired, seven hydroelectric, four natural gas-fired and two wind powered facilities. Among them, three coalfired thermal electric generating facilities are: 1) Boundary Dam Power Station at Estevan, 2) Poplar RiverPower Station near Coronach, and 3) Shand Power Station near Estevan. All those power plants use brown coalcalled lignite, which is burnt to make steam in the boiler that runs the generator to produce electricity.However, during firing of the coal, huge amounts of fly and bottom ash are produced. SaskPower stores thatashin lagoons. This ash contains valuable metals, especially rare earth elements (REEs), and REEs are widely usedin the high tech industries to produce smartphones, electric/hybrid cars, wind mill turbines, permanent magnets,missiles, etc. Since the existing lagoon capacities are running out, SaskPower is now looking to attract areseller of the fly ash being produced prior to impoundment in the lagoons. SaskPower has also planned theremoval and recycling of the impounded fly ash and produce a REEs concentrated ore body, which couldgenerate extra revenue for the company as a value added by-product of REEs. In the proposed research, asustainable process will be developed to recover valuable rare earth elements from the fly ash and bottom ashusing hydrometallurgical techniques.