Published June 28, 2023
By Christine Reed
The University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources (SER) recently executed a lease at the Wyoming Innovation Center (WyIC) to advance technologies that consume Wyoming natural resources, including coal processing technology, in the large research complex.
Conceived in 2015 by Energy Capital Economic Development (ECED) in partnership with SER, WyIC is a 5,500 square foot facility situated on reclaimed mine land that opened its doors on June of 2022 as a location to conduct research on carbon capture, rare earth element extraction from fly ash, and other coal-to-products research.
Ideally positioned in the heart of the Power River Basin northeast of Gillette, the facility boasts close proximity to three major coal mines in the area enabling easy access for large scale technology testing on coal.
The latest lease is the second project affiliated with SER to take up residence in the facility. The first tenant, the National Energy Technology Laboratory in collaboration with SER, will be utilizing space at the venue to advance a project extracting rare earth elements from fly ash. The research is intended to culminate in a pilot-scale facility at the Center and is aimed at launching a new industry in extracting critical REE materials from the ash of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin coal.
The new lease will allow SER to further expand its research and demonstration of a coal processing technology developed in SER’s Center for Carbon Capture and Conversion (CCCC), which is focused on developing non-thermal products from coal.
“Current applications of our technology in the lab are producing material at the gram scale and our on-campus pilot plants are producing material at the kilogram scale,” says Trina Igelsrud-Pfeiffer, director of the CCCC. “Moving our technologies to the Wyoming Innovation Center has several advantages. One advantage is that the field demonstration facility will provide larger volumes of material for the Carbon Engineering research teams to increase their research activities in the area of high-volume coal derived products. Another advantage is that the facility will allow us to collect engineering and process data to be used for designing our commercial facility.”
“We are excited to now have a lease with WyIC, yielding the opportunity to advance multiple research and demonstration projects at a much larger scale,” says SER Executive Director Holly Krutka. “SER has been grateful to be part of making WyIC a reality from day one and we are thrilled to have some of the first projects to move onto the site. We aim to develop new opportunities for consuming Wyoming coal, and where better to demonstrate them than in Campbell County, where the largest coal mines in the world reside.”
The partnership is an important development in the research-to-commercialization goal of the Center while promoting and advancing the diversification of Wyoming’s economy by utilizing existing raw materials.
“Bringing this project to the WyIC is a critical first step in advancing coal to products research towards commercialization,” says ECED CEO Phil Christopherson. “Scaling up technologies that utilize coal as a raw material has the potential to bring new manufacturing of carbon-based products to Wyoming. This will help preserve jobs in the coal industry while introducing new markets for one of Wyoming’s most abundant mineral resources. As the nation moves away from coal as an energy source we are working diligently to find, develop and create new markets for coal and coal by products. We are grateful for our long partnership with SER. Their dedication to a strong economic future in Wyoming is shown by their past work and by scaling up their research at the WyIC.”
For more information on WyIC, visit https://www.energycapitaled.com/wyoming-innovation-center-open-for-business/
