In the spring, NREL chemist Stefanie Van Wychen and a team of five departed Juneau, Alaska, and flew to Ketchikan, a city known for its “feisty salmon,” glacier-shaped wilderness, and snaking waterways. From there, the team boarded the Nordic Lady, and after four hours arrived at Prince of Wales Island, Bokan Mountain looming above them as they motored in. At the dock where the team’s work would begin, the diversity of marine life was surprising and awe inspiring.
The team’s focus was on seaweed- specifically, the species that grow in the waters below Bokan Mountain, a former uranium mine. The seaweed can absorb rare earth elements (REEs), critical components in things we use or encounter every day: including laptops, smartphones, data centers, and medical equipment, as well as defense technology like lasers, missiles, and guidance systems.
Ever since the 1960s, when the U.S. Geological Survey discovered that the tree-thick Prince of Wales Island hid a treasure trove of REEs, people have flocked there to mine the minerals. But now, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, NREL researchers are investigating if the island’s vegetation might be even easier to mine than its soil.
“Our main focus is discovering the method of accumulation and mineral selectivity by the seaweed to derive biomimetic or bioinspired alternatives that we can build in the laboratory to help with seawater biomining,” said NREL bioenergy researcher Lieve Laurens, an NREL principal investigator for the project. If the team can figure out how the seaweed soaks up the metals, they can determine which species might host the most. That way, future algal farmers might cultivate rare-earth-metal-rich seaweeds to help the country meet increasing demand.
Read more from NREL: A Phyto Finish: Could Seaweed Be Mined for Critical Minerals? | NREL