According to foreign media reports, Alcoa has received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to explore the recovery of key minerals from bauxite residue.
The DOE has approved a pilot project in Saline County, Arkansas, to recover key minerals from the mining waste left over from early bauxite mining operations.
This project is part of a 9-private-sector investment project selected by the DOE at a cost of 162 million U.S. dollars, aiming to recover key minerals and other materials from industrial and mining by-products.
Currently, Alcoa is planning to test a microwave technology to extract these materials from the existing residue.
Assistant Secretary of the DOE, Audrey Robertson, said: "We believe their technology can solve this problem. This technology has been achieved in the laboratory and has been applied on a small scale."
The next challenge is to determine whether it can effectively function in large-scale applications.
Robertson said that the federal government's support is intended to help private enterprises advance such technologies from the experimental stage to commercial applications.
