Metal Recycling: From Waste to Valuable Resources

Dear Colleagues,

Metal recycling transforms discarded materials into valuable resources through collection, sorting, and processing, leading to significant environmental benefits like reduced energy use (up to 95% less for some metals compared to those produced from raw ores), lower greenhouse gas emissions, economic advantages such as cost savings and job creation, and improved resource conservation due to decreased demand for virgin metal. This practice is a vital part of a circular economy, turning waste into new products and sustainable solutions. The energy transition is built on electrification, relying on technologies that are metal-intensive, and recycling helps alleviate primary supply constraints. Steel and aluminium combined account for almost 10% of global emissions, but secondary aluminium production typically has a five- to twenty-five-times lower carbon footprint than primary aluminium production, and for steel, emissions are often halved by using scrap. Recycling also keeps reusable materials out of landfills. Geopolitical instability and the reliance on China for critical minerals have become major concerns in the United States and the European Union, among other places, and the use of domestically sourced recycled metal helps reduce reliance on imports or single sources of metals. This Special Issue aims to present advances in waste recycling, focusing on the separation and recovery of metals from batteries, mining waste, minerals, or post-consumer products (using pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical techniques, among others). We welcome articles and reviews on the development of any of the abovementioned recycling technologies, and innovative technologies that could be used for composites, as well as their applications. We hope to receive articles addressing the development of recycling technology (pyro- and hydrometallurgical processes with different novel extraction agents) for strategically separating metals from critical raw materials and their innovate applications; sustainability and circularity studies; and studies on other relevant topics.

Dr. María Isabel Martín Hernández
Guest Editor

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