The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation has selected Alcoa USA Corp. to participate in a pilot project aimed at increasing domestic production of critical minerals and metals.

The project, based in Saline County, is part of a $162 million funding initiative that includes nine pilot projects. These projects will focus on developing processes to recover essential elements like gallium, scandium, copper, antimony, and rare earth elements from industrial feedstocks.

Alcoa has a history of processing bauxite into alumina in Saline County, and the project aims to extract gallium from the red mud generated during this process.