U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D) stopped by the Penn State Center for Critical Minerals on Thursday to highlight the federal funds they received to further develop a "novel" technique to recover rare earth elements from acid mine drainage.

Elisa Alonso, a physical scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), will give the 2023 G. Albert Shoemaker Lecture in Mineral Engineering at Penn State. Her talk, “Rare Earth Elements are not the only critical mineral commodities,” will be held at 3 p.m. on Friday, April 14, in the Hub-Robeson Center’s Freeman Auditorium and online via Zoom. A reception will follow the lecture at 4 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Elham Rahimi, a graduate student in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, received the SME Ph.D. Fellowship grant from the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (SME).

Waste heat has been a challenge that scientists and engineers have been pondering for decades. What can be done with this lost energy and can it be harnessed in a useful way? As combustion and technology improved, the percentage of waste heat has decreased, but it is estimated that up to 50% of all industrial energy is lost through waste heat. If that heat could captured or used in a meaningful way, society would move closer to a circular economy.

 Penn State’s Center for Critical Minerals will receive $2.1 million in federal funding to design, build and test a modular pilot-scale research and development unit intended to recover vital rare earth elements and other critical minerals from Pennsylvania streams and other environmental sources.  

Sanjay Srinivasan, professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering, has been named director of the Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) Energy Institute (EI), effective July 1.