JAMES RICHARDS 

Michigan State University, MS in Environmental Engineering 

Smith + Gardner Scholar 2026 

Project Title 

REE Recovery from Coal Fly Ash with Sequential Bio-Desilication Pretreatment and Spent-Medium Bioleaching 

Project Description 

Each year, approximately 100 million metric tons of coal fly ash (CFA), a byproduct of coal combustion, are generated in the United States. Much of this material is stored in waste ponds, wherecontaminants can leach into the environment. CFA also contains economically significant concentrations of rare earth elements (REEs), a group of critical metals that are essential for manufacturingmany energy technologies and face potential supply chain disruptions. Current methods to recover REEs from CFA often rely on hazardous chemicals and consume excessive amounts of electricity because of the complex structure of CFA particles. This has created a need for more sustainable recovery methods. Bioleaching is one potential approach that utilizes microorganisms and the compounds they produce to recover metals from materials such as CFA. However, current bioleaching methods for CFA often require energy- and chemical-intensive pretreatments to break down the structure of the ash, reducing some of the environmental benefits from the process.  This research explores a more sustainable approach using silicon-solubilizing bacteria to pretreat CFA and make its REEs more accessible for subsequent bioleaching. This project will evaluate whether combining microbiological pretreatment with bioleaching can achieve REE recoveries comparable to conventional physicochemical methods while reducing chemical and energy use. Ultimately, this research aims to determine whether this approach can provide a more environmentally sustainable and cost-effective method for recovering valuable REEs from coal fly ash.   

Biography 

James was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and earned his BS in Environmental Engineering at Michigan State University in May 2026. He is currently a graduate student at MSU and expects to earn his MS in Environmental Engineering in 2027. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi and Chi Epsilon, the engineering and civil engineering honor societies, respectively. His first professional experiences were two civil engineering internships in which he assisted municipal engineering departments with updating township utility info, optimizing erosion control permitting, and serving as an inspector for infrastructure maintenance projects. In 2025-2026, Richards interned for an international environmental consulting firm where he worked primarily in remediation, collaborating within engineering project teams and assisting field staff to support sites undergoing different phases of environmental assessment. His experiences most relevant to his research stem from undergraduate research assistantships with two professors specializing in environmental microbiology in MSU’s Civil and Environmental Engineering department. His current research reflects his interests, which lie in the intersection of environmental microbiology, remediation, and sustainable resource management.