A Purdue Chemical Engineering research team headed by Professor Linda Wang has been awarded silver prize in the 2018 Mobile World Congress Scholar Challenge for their project, Waste coal ash could provide wealth of rare earth elements.

Wang, the Maxine Spencer Nichols Professor of Chemical Engineering, and graduate students Hoon Choi, David Harvey, and Yi Ding are developing new efficient and inexpensive technologies that could allow the extraction of rare earth elements, which are critical components of many electronics and green products, from waste coal ash. The award was announced during the Mobile World Congress 2018 meetings in Barcelona, Spain, held February 26 through March 1.

The 2018 GSMA Mobile World Congress convenes industry leaders, visionaries, and innovators to explore the trends that will shape the mobile industry in the years ahead. Attendees include 108,000 professionals from 208 countries.

Read more about Professor Linda Wang and her team’s research in a recent news release. View a video about the team’s technological developments to extract rare earth elements here.