Drivers and Constraints of Critical Materials Recycling: The Case of Indium

Abstract

Abstract:Raw material criticality studies are receiving increasing attention because an increasing number of elements of great economic importance, performing essential functions face high supply risks. Scarcity of key materials is a potential barrier to large-scale deployment of sustainable energy and clean-tech technologies as resorting to several critical materials. As physical scarcity and geopolitical issues may present a barrier to the supply of critical metals, recycling is regarded as a possible solution to substitute primary resources for securing the long-term supply of critical metals. In this paper, the main drivers and constraints for critical materials recycling are analyzed from literature, considering indium as a case study of critical materials. This literature review shows that waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) could be a future source of critical metals; however, the reduction of dissipation of critical materials should have much higher priority. It is put forward that more attention should be paid to sustainable management of critical materials, especially improved practices at the waste management stage. This calls for not only more efficient WEEE recycling technologies, but also revising priorities in recycling strategies.

Backlighting the European Indium Recycling Potentials

“…Additional boost to the regional indium demand could derive from low‐carbon energy systems such as wind turbines (Kim et al. ) and PV (Ylä‐Mella and Pongrácz ), particularly in case of high market penetration of thin films solar cells (Stamp et al. ; Zimmermann ).…”

“…On the other hand, scaling the pilot process up to the industrial scale can likely reduce the environmental impacts per unit of indium recycled. Other factors that can play in favor of indium recycling include the recovery of other metals from waste like discarded LCDs (Hagelüken ), which would enable to allocate the environmental impacts among the valuable recoverables, greater market penetration rates of renewable sources in the electricity production mix, and the adoption of strategies for resource efficiencies (e.g., design for recycling, ecodesign) (Ylä‐Mella and Pongrácz ; Ardente et al. ).…”

The Link between e-Waste and GDP—New Insights from Data from the Pan-European Region

“…WEEE contains both hazardous and precious components, and is a rapidly growing waste stream [3][4][5]. The responsible collection and recycling of WEEE reduces environmental harm [6,7] and facilitates the recovery of valuable materials [8][9][10], including rare earth elements and other critical raw materials (e.g., indium and gallium) that are of vital importance for modern economies [11][12][13][14]. The recycling of WEEE is a complex task requiring an effective technical infrastructure and managerial framework [15,16], and it has potential to generate significant economic wealth from recovered rare and important metals [12,17,18].…”

Circular Product Design: Addressing Critical Materials through Design

“…16 This is partially because they are used in very small quantities in products, and are often highly mixed with other materials (as alloys for example), which makes them difficult to separate. 3 According to Ylä-Mella & Pongrácz, 17 other reasons for the low recycling rates of critical materials are missing economic incentives for recycling, and a lack of appropriate recycling technologies and infrastructure. Complicating factors are the current trend of product miniaturization and increased integration of materials, which is good from the perspective of minimization of the use of critical materials, but which may hamper their recovery.…”