The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced on November 21, 2024, $36 million to recover critical metals and high energy-value materials like ammonia from wastewater.
The agency’s program, Realize Energy-rich Compound Opportunities Valorizing Extraction from Refuse waters (RECOVER), aims to enable the U.S. to fully replace imports of valuable materials with domestic sources by tapping into resources commonly found in municipal, agricultural, and industrial waste streams.
“RECOVER is an ambitious program focused on retrieving high-value materials from wastewater, a largely untapped resource,” said ARPA-E Director Evelyn N. Wang in a press release. “RECOVER technologies will transform waste streams into critical materials sources that commoditize the vast volumes of wastewater flowing through our systems and strengthen our energy security.”
According to a DOE press release, the U.S. imports millions of tons of ammonia and almost all critical metals needed for electronics, clean energy, and military technologies. Yet, significant amounts of these materials exist in domestic wastewater systems, untreated and discarded.
RECOVER aims to enable replacement of 50% of conventional ammonia supplies and offset some or all critical metals imports. The recovery technologies developed under this program will seek to capture multiple high-energy materials from wastewater and reduce the energy consumption and CO2 emissions associated with traditional methods, while remaining cost competitive.
RECOVER is intended to reduce the need for new mining of critical metals in the U.S, which has significant environmental impacts and can take up to 18 years to permit. Instead, new recovery technologies will be energy efficient, highly selective, and durable for long-term use. Processes will involve few sequential steps and will be automated, scalable, and adaptable to existing or new wastewater facilities.
ARPA-E advances high-potential, high-impact energy technologies across a wide range of technical areas that are too early for private-sector investment. Learn more about these efforts and ARPA-E's commitment to ensuring the United States continues to lead the world in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies.
