Rare metals, such as cobalt, the lithium, the copper, the nickel, the rare earths and the manganeseare essential to modern technologies such as batteries, renewable energies and electronics.
Rare metals present major environmental, geopolitical, technical and health challenges. Their extraction leads to significant impacts, such as soil and water pollution and significant greenhouse gas emissions, while their processing recycling remains costly and technologically complex. Dependence on geopolitically sensitive regions makes supply chains vulnerable, accentuating economic risks. On the technical front, the diversity of end-of-life products and the complexity of recovery processes limit the effectiveness and widespread adoption of recycling technologies. Finally, workers' health is jeopardized by exposure to toxic substances, underlining the need to improve safety protocols and develop safer, more sustainable technologies.
Against this backdrop, recycling and recovery of rare metals appear to be essential solutions for reducing dependence on primary resources, limiting environmental impact and guaranteeing sustainable supplies.
Recycling and recovery techniques
Faced with these challenges, we cite in the following paragraphs some of the techniques studied in recent scientific literature around each of these metals.
Rare earths: complex but essential recovery
Rare earths, used in advanced technologies such as permanent magnets and displays, pose significant recycling challenges. Acid leaching is a proven method for recovering these elements from batteries and electronic scrap. Ahn et al (2020) demonstrated that this technique could achieve a recovery rate of 99 %, by optimizing pH and temperature conditions. Another innovative approach is to use deep eutectic solvents (DES), such as the levulinic acid-choline chloride mixture, which offers an environmentally-friendly alternative to conventional leaching (Pateli et al., 2020).
In addition, electrochemical techniques, such as the diffusion dialysis process, enable rare earths present in hard disks and other electronic devices to be recovered with low energy consumption (Hammache et al., 2021). Finally, the use of nanomaterials to adsorb ions from rare earth-enriched wastewater has shown promising performance, with high adsorption capacities and effective adsorbent reusability (Kegl et al., 2019)...
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What you'll find :
- Recycling and recovery techniques for the following rare metals:
- Rare earths complex but essential recovery
- Cobalt a critical resource in modern batteries
- Lithium an essential pillar of the energy transition
- Copper a largely mastered recycling model
- Nickel and manganese state-of-the-art technologies for optimum recovery
- Rich, structured content a detailed 12-page analysis, listing more than 80 recent scientific publications (2019 to 2024).
Why download this summary?
- Concrete, strategic solutions In-depth exploration of innovations and the latest recycling techniques for key metals such as cobalt, lithium, rare earths, copper, nickel and manganese.
- Looking ahead : Discover technological avenues to light up your innovation strategy (opportunities, trend notes, roadmap, market research, etc.).
- A bridge between industry startups and the academic world : Produced from the ideXlab open innovation platformthis synthesis aims to facilitating partnerships and promote joint solutions to the challenges of recycling rare metals.
The ideXlab open innovation platform is aimed at all innovative companies, whatever their sector or size, seeking to optimize their innovation and technological performance. In particular, it is aimed at R&D, innovation, technology watch and new product and service development and purchasing teams. Users may be engineers, scientists, innovation project managers, buyers of new technologies or strategic decision-makers.
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