DOE Selects $29.5 Million in National Laboratory Projects for Critical Minerals

DOE’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation has selected 17 national laboratory projects for award negotiations totaling $29.5 million. The September 30 announcement focuses on technologies intended to improve domestic mineral recovery and processing.

The selections include Argonne work on recovering copper, nickel and cobalt from low-grade materials and on recovering rare earth elements from coal ash and mine tailings. Other work includes Ames research using magnetic and acoustic techniques to improve ore characterization.

These are research selections subject to negotiations, rather than announcements of new commercial factories. The funding supports technical development that may inform future industrial processes and investment decisions.

Infraday analysis

Domestic manufacturing depends on the reliability and economics of upstream materials as well as factory capacity. Technologies that improve recovery from lower-grade resources could widen the usable feedstock base, but scale-up requires evidence beyond laboratory results. Infrastructure and industrial teams should watch pilot performance, process integration and commercial deployment decisions as the next meaningful milestones.

Source: U.S. Department of Energy announcement, September 30, 2026.

Featured photograph: Argonne National Laboratory, October 2008. Archival aerial photograph. Photo: John Hill / Argonne National Laboratory. CC BY-SA 2.0. Image may be resized or cropped for display.