Advances in the Recycling of Industrial Waste: Critical Minerals in the Clean Energy Transition
A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Green Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2025 | Viewed by 1499
Special Issue Editors
Interests: recycling; extraction of critical metals; hydrometallurgy; metal; waste management; urban mining
Interests: recycling; waste; hydrometallurgy; circular economy; mining waste; battery waste; metals; rare earth
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The Earth is overheating. Scientists agree that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere are to blame for this change. The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26) ratified the commitment to achieve so-called Carbon Neutrality by 2050. To achieve this goal, energy transition is essential. Changing from an energy system based on the use of fossil fuels to a low-emission or carbon-free one, based on intensive use of materials in which the supply of mineral raw materials, many of which are critical, is crucial. COP28 in Dubai agreed to the transition away from fossil fuels. Clean energy technologies require more mineral resources than those based on fossil fuels. According to estimates by the International Energy Agency (IEA), current mineral consumption is set to quadruple and, in the case of a zero-emissions scenario in 2050, it could increase sixfold, raising huge questions about the availability and reliability of mineral resource supply. Even if there are sufficient mineral resources, it is not guaranteed that supplies will be easily and affordably available where and when they are needed. The two main parameters for determining criticality have been economic importance and supply risk for the EU. Critical raw materials (CRM) are key materials for renewable energy technologies and electric mobility. Given the decline in scarce but essential raw materials such as indium, tin, lithium, cobalt, magnesium, tantalum, antimony, rare earths, gold, silver, copper, etc. and their difficulty in obtaining them, the proposal for recycling and recovering critical metals has recently emerged, which seems to be one of the strategies to help lighten mineral extraction; however, to date most of these resources have low recycling and/or recovery rates at the end of their useful life. For example, in the case of batteries, some authors point out that recycling them has the greatest opportunity to reduce primary demand for metals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel and manganese. This Special Issue aims to consolidate advances in industrial waste recycling, focusing especially on the separation and recovery of critical and strategic metals from post-consumer products, mining waste or minerals (using chemical methods: pyrometallurgical, hydrometallurgical, adsorption, evaporation, precipitation techniques, etc.). Articles and reviews dealing with the development of any cited recycling technology, and any innovative technologies that could be used for composites, as well as their exploitation, are very welcome. We look forward to receiving articles addressing the development of any recycling technology with/using chemical methods (pyro and hydrometallurgical processes with novel and different extraction agents) that could be used for separation of metals in critical and critical and strategic in raw materials, innovate applications and sustainability studies, and other relevant topics.
Dr. María Isabel Martín Hernández
Dr. Olga Rodríguez Largo
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- waste material recycling
- metal removal
- metal recovery
- critical metal separation
- hydrometallurgical processes
- pyrometallurgical process
- urban mining
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