For generations, coal has been a central part of Kentucky's economy and power grid, but a shift in the energy market toward renewable and cleaner energy sources has led to significant declines in coal production.

Now, researchers at the University of Kentucky have found a way to bring coal into the clean energy mix.

One of the missions of the center for Energy Research is to take the state's resource, in this case, coal or other resources, and maximize their value, to the economic opportunities of the time.

Our focus is on taking coal and converting it over into high value graphite products.

And the one we're really focused on right now is battery grade graphite for lithium ion batteries.

Rechargeable lithium ion batteries are around us everywhere.

We talk.

They're in your phone and your computer and your tablets.

Maybe your car.

If you have a plug in hybrid or a plug in electric vehicle.

All of these batteries use a lot of graphite.

In fact, for lithium ion battery, there's far more graphite than there is lithium in the battery.

So, in terms of, graphite use, it's really all around you.

And the function of the graphite really is to store the lithium ions, the, the demand for, for energy storage, in this case of graphite for batteries is actually increasing pretty rapidly across across the globe.

Not only for things like, battery, electric vehicles across globally, but also in battery energy storage systems.

And these are systems that you might have in your house.

For example, when we, for example, lose power, you can run your house off of these batteries that you may have in your garage or elsewhere.

All of these, along with smaller batteries in your phones, in your in your tablets, in your power tools, for example.

All of these require, a lot of graphite.

Now, graphite for energy storage has a value of approximately $10,000 per ton.

That's pretty high.

And right now, about 90% of all that graphite is imported to the United States.

So one of the things that we're looking to do is to take, a natural resource, in this case, coal natural resource of Kentucky, which is rich in aromatic carbons to convert that over in a sensible way into highly crystal and graphite that we can use in batteries.

Now, coal has a value of approximately about $100 per ton.

So there's a large difference in value between the starting material that we're looking at, which is coal, and to our final, battery grade graphite.

And then coupled to that is the overall demand globally.

Right now, there's about a demand of about 2 million tons per year of, graphite for batteries.

We expect that to actually grow maybe to about 3 million tons per year by the end of the decade.

This is a big team effort because it is such a, wide river, if you will.

I mean, we're taking coal essentially from the ground, and then we're processing that through to a synthetic graphite that are then integrating that graphite into electrodes and fabricating batteries.

Then we're testing those batteries over cycling and so forth.

So my group here is is really a team effort to do all of that.

And to make that happen here in a unique way.

At the UK center for Applied Energy Research.