Adding value to North Dakota’s abundant reserves of lignite coal

Since the mid-1980s, the lignite industry has been one of North Dakota’s steadiest major industries. North Dakotans have been able to count the lignite industry to produce about 30 million tons of coal a year and convert that energy into electricity and synthetic natural gas along with fertilizer and other products.

This activity has benefited the state through tax revenue, economic activity, thousands of jobs and by providing affordable and reliable clean electricity. As the industry looks to the future, the Lignite Energy Council seeks to see what other products can be made from lignite coal. To that end, the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) recently completed a study titled “Value-Added Opportunities for North Dakota Lignite.”

“The goal of the study was two-fold,” said Mike Holmes, vice president of research and development for the Lignite Energy Council. “First, we wanted to identify and communicate all the things that we are doing with lignite today, while also looking to the future and building upon today’s industry. We are looking for near-term, value-added opportunities.”

Holmes said the North Dakota Lignite Energy Council has been collaborating with Brown Coal Innovation Australia (BCIA) – a trade association headquartered in Melbourne, Australia – which is also looking at new and innovative ways to use their native coal reserves. Australia has the only known reserves of lignite coal that are larger than North Dakota’s. Holmes spoke at BCIA’s conference in the spring of 2018, and Brian Davey, chief executive officer of BCIA, will speak at the Lignite Energy Council’s Annual Meeting in Bismarck in April 2019 to share ideas and progress reports.

“With an eye on expanding our industry, we wanted the EERC to identify some potential markets,” Holmes added. “As our society evolves, new markets open up for the industries that are willing to innovate and North Dakota’s lignite industry has a proud history of being a leader in innovation through research and development.”

One of the potential opportunities centers around synthetic graphite, which can be used in building lithium-ion batteries. Lignite has a high concentration of carbon, which makes it a suitable material for making synthetic graphite. By transforming raw lignite to graphite would increase its value in the marketplace immensely.

Another new market involves rare earth elements that are found co-mingled with beds of lignite. The rare earth elements are used in many high-tech electronics including military defense systems, and extracting them from domestic sources such as lignite would reduce the country’s dependence on importing these resources from foreign countries. Currently, almost all of the rare earth elements used in domestic manufacturing come from one country – China.

The summary document prepared by the EERC is a partial listing of potential new uses for lignite. For more information about the value-added products from North Dakota lignite, click on this link and go to the full study, which can be found on this Web site.