Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior.
Valuable rare earth elements that are crucial for batteries, touchscreens and other modern technologies may be snuggled right up against fossil fuels, researchers have discovered.
The vast majority of rare earth elements are currently mined or processed in China, and so the U.S. Department of Energy has been funding the hunt for these elements in the United States, in hopes of spurring domestic production. Inspired by previous research that had found rare earth elements in association with coal in the Appalachian region, Birgenheier and her team took samples from six active and four idle coal mines in central Utah and western Colorado. The researchers used X-ray fluorescence and mass spectrometry — two geochemical methods for determining which elements exist within a sample — to look for traces of the 17 metallic rare earths elements.
The researchers found that between 24% and 45% of shale and siltstone rocks adjacent to coal seams had at least 200 parts per million of these elements, while 100% of volcanic rocks sampled contained rare earth elements at those levels or higher.
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