{"id":139743,"date":"2022-05-23T19:02:42","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T00:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/fly-ash-contains-rare-earth-elements-needed-for-electronics"},"modified":"2022-05-23T19:02:42","modified_gmt":"2022-05-24T00:02:42","slug":"fly-ash-contains-rare-earth-elements-needed-for-electronics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/fly-ash-contains-rare-earth-elements-needed-for-electronics","title":{"rendered":"\u201cFly ash\u201d contains rare earth elements needed for electronics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DSMt37L-Sfs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The United States\u2019 reliance on China for rare earth elements could soon come to an end, thanks to a new process that pulls the valuable metals from the ash left over when we burn coal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why it matters:<\/strong> The 17 rare earth elements aren\u2019t actually rare \u2014 they\u2019re all more common than gold, and one is more abundant than copper. But getting our hands on them is difficult because they\u2019re widely dispersed in Earth\u2019s crust and hard to extract through <a href=\"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/space\/space-mining\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">mining<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a problem because we need rare earth elements to make <em>a lot<\/em> of <a href=\"https:\/\/cen.acs.org\/materials\/inorganic-chemistry\/coal-new-source-rare-earths\/96\/i28\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">products<\/a>, from smartphones and satellites to electric cars and wind turbines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The United States\u2019 reliance on China for rare earth elements could soon come to an end, thanks to a new process that pulls the valuable metals from the ash left over when we burn coal. Why it matters: The 17 rare earth elements aren\u2019t actually rare \u2014 they\u2019re all more common than gold, and one [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1512,2028,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile-phones","category-satellites","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}