The Eurecat technology centre has successfully tested new technologies to recover strategic raw materials including lithium, nickel and cobalt from various kinds of waste and by-products to help secure their supply, avert the environmental impact of their mining and support decarbonising by means of the circular economy.
Critical raw materials (CRM) “are crucial to economic activity since they are used to produce a broad range of goods and new technology in the automotive industry, renewable energy and other sectors,” says Miquel Rovira, Director of Eurecat’s Sustainability Department.
“These materials are critical since their supply is not always assured because they are scarce resources, and access to them once they have been mined is a strategic issue for Europe which involves recovering them with technologies that promote the circular economy and industrial self-sufficiency.”
Recovering valuable raw materials from waste
One example is the European Sea4Value project where Eurecat has been involved in developing a new process for recovering high-value materials and minerals such as lithium and magnesium from effluent produced by seawater desalination plants.
These technologies make desalination more sustainable by lessening the negative impact of the hypersaline concentrate they generate and using part of this brine as a sustainable source to extract minerals in the seas and oceans and thus obtain valuable raw materials.
Eurecat has in addition coordinated the European Salema project which has explored a circular economy model using waste and scrap as an alternative source of critical raw materials and also replacing them with aluminium alloy components for electric vehicles.
It has further been engaged in the FREE4LIB project geared towards developing sustainable and efficient technology for dismantling, pre-treatment and materials recovery in end-of-life lithium-ion battery recycling.
Eurecat has additionally tested and developed new sustainable hydrometallurgy processes harnessing reagents and processes with a lower environmental impact and better payback to recover valuable products and strategic raw materials including lithium, manganese, nickel and cobalt from electronic waste and batteries.
It has also devised a microwave plasma spheroidisation system for recovering powdered or waste material from manufacturing processes for reuse in industrial operations. Eurecat additionally has a pilot plant which can make customised powder on demand either with high-purity raw materials or from recovered scrap metal.
Growing demand for lithium, cobalt, nickel and other critical materials
The International Energy Agency says that between 2017 and 2022, demand for lithium tripled, demand for cobalt jumped by 70 per cent, and demand for nickel rose by 40 per cent. Other studies suggest that by 2040, demand for lithium will be 15 times higher than in 2020 and demand for nickel will be 2.5 times greater in a trend which is also expected to be seen in copper, neodymium and other minerals.
The most recent Circularity Gap Report finds that the global economy is only 7.2 per cent circular, a figure that is declining due to rising mining and use of materials. Its latest annual study estimates that over half a trillion tonnes of materials have been consumed in the last six years, almost as much as in the entire 20th century.
