The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office (AMMTO) is launching the American-Made Electronics Scrap Recycling Advancement Prize (ESCRAP) $3.95 million in prizes, this three-phase prize is designed to stimulate innovative approaches that reduce the costs and environmental impact of critical material recovery from electronic scrap (e-scrap)
Donor Name: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Awards and Prizes
Deadline: 09/05/2024
Size of the Grant: $500,000 to $1 Million
Grant Duration: 1 Year
Details:
The Electronics Scrap Recycling Advancement Prize (E-SCRAP) is a $3.95M challenge sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office (AMMTO). The prize aims to stimulate innovative approaches that reduce the costs and environmental impact of critical material recovery from electronic scrap (e-scrap).
This prize focuses on innovative approaches, processes, or technologies in service of optimizing and implementing critical material separation and recovery from e-scrap. The prize is open to any competitor who works in waste collection and management, dismantling and sorting, separation, refining, validation, and material supply. This is a non-exhaustive list and those who are working in the recycling value chain are encouraged to apply.
E-SCRAP is not just a competition; it’s a catalyst for change. By addressing challenges in the e-scrap recycling value chain, competitor teams can each win up to $800,000 in cash prizes and $150,000 in national laboratory analysis support over the course of the three-phase competition.
The prize is open to competitors looking to:

Build partnerships across the recycling value chain to optimize and integrate critical material separation and recovery technologies.
Develop and demonstrate innovations along the recycling value chain to enhance the recovery of critical materials from e-scrap.
Select at least one challenge (technical, supply chain, or related logistics hurdle) that needs further development and establish high impact opportunities (co-recovery, feedstock flexibility, information share, material benchmarking…) that will increase the domestic supply of critical materials from e-scrap.
Create or enhance supply chains to increase material circularity (e.g., accelerating connectivity between collection, sorting, pre-treatment, processing, refining, validation, and material qualification)

Areas of Interest
Examples of innovations of interest include:

Innovations focused on electronic scrap and could include communication devices such as mobile phones, home appliances, medical or office equipment—anything powered by electricity.
Innovations that establish or expand the supply chains of the following critical materials for clean energy: aluminum, cobalt, copper, dysprosium, electrical steel, fluorine, gallium, iridium, lithium, magnesium, natural graphite, neodymium, nickel, platinum, praseodymium, silicon, silicon carbide, and terbium.
Innovative approaches, processes, or technologies with improvements to collection and management of scrap, dismantling and sorting, separation, refining, validation, and material supply that serve the optimization and integration of critical material separation and recovery technologies from e-scrap.
Innovative approaches, processes, or technologies in service of optimizing and implementing critical material separation and recovery from e-scrap.
Innovative approaches to multiple recovery pathways including:

Material separation (e.g., Nd separation from shredded e-scrap)
Component recovery (e.g., targeted disassembly for removal of permanent magnets from motors or hard disk drives)
Reuse (e.g., recovery, validation, and integration of second-life magnets into electronic or energy applications)

Integrated recycling value chains that optimize feedstock concentration (sorting and pretreatment) and material separation (e.g., electrochemically) to produce Nd from e-scrap.
Innovative approaches to recovering one or more critical materials and value-added products in parallel or in series from e-scrap.

Funding Information

Phase 1

Prize: $50,000 in cash and $30,000 of analysis consulting during Phase 2
Duration (Months): Six months

Phase 2

Prize: $150,000 in cash and $120,000 in analysis technical support during Phase 3
Duration (Months): Nine months

Phase 3

Prize: $600,000 in cash
Duration (Months): 12 months.

Eligibility Criteria 
The competition is open only to individuals; private entities (for-profits and nonprofits); nonfederal government entities such as states, counties, tribes, and municipalities; and academic institutions; subject to the following requirements:

An individual prize competitor (who is not competing as a member of a group) must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.
A group of individuals competing as one team may win, provided that the online account holder of the submission is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. Individuals competing as part of a team are eligible to participate if they are legally authorized to work in the United States.
Private entities must be incorporated in and maintain a primary place of business in the United States.
Academic institutions must be based in the United States.
DOE employees, employees of sponsoring organizations, members of their immediate families (e.g., spouses, children, siblings, or parents), and persons living in the same household as such persons, whether or not related, are not eligible to participate in the prize.
Individuals who worked at DOE (federal employees or support service contractors) within six months prior to the submission deadline of any contest are not eligible to participate in any prize contests in this program.
Federal entities and federal employees are not eligible to participate in any portion of the prize.
NREL employees not involved in the administration of the prize and all other national lab employees, including laboratory researchers, may participate as private individuals, provided they do not use their facilities at the national laboratories.
Entities and individuals publicly banned from doing business with the U.S. government such as entities and individuals debarred, suspended, or otherwise excluded from or ineligible for participating in Federal programs are not eligible to compete.
Individuals participating in a foreign government talent recruitment program sponsored by a country of risk18 and teams that include such individuals are not eligible to compete.
Entities owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a government of a country of risk are not eligible to compete.

For more information, visit DOE.