Will metal scarcity impede routine industrial use?

Abstract

The dynamism of metal extraction and useAs recently as 20 or 30 years ago, designers of most manufactured products drew from a palette of a dozen or so metals. That situation has changed remarkably, as modern technology employs virtually the entire periodic table. A few examples illustrate this point: turbine-blade alloys and coatings make use of more than a dozen metals; 1 thousands of components are assembled into a single notebook computer; and medical equipment, medical diagnostics, and other high-level technological products incorporate more than 70 metals.2 This transformation is the result of the continuing search for better materials performance. To improve operational characteristics, 60 or so metals are incorporated into each microchip, 3 and microchips are increasingly embedded into industrial plants, means of transportation, building equipment and appliances, consumer products, and other devices. 4 It is thus increasingly important to determine whether reliable supplies of all of these metals are available, because a product designer might wish to employ a material that is not available in suffi cient quantity or at a suitable price when it is needed. 5During the Industrial Revolution, vast metal deposits became accessible. Since then, wars or cartels have occasionally disrupted supplies for short periods, but the markets have always been restored over time. More recently, however, challenges to medium-or long-term supplies of a number of metals 6,7 have led to increasing unease. This state of mind was reinforced in 2011 by a committee of the American Physical Society and the Materials Research Society that identifi ed several elements, including 10 rare earth elements, as potentially critical for energy-related technologies. 8 Metals, in particular, are being extracted at increasing rates ( Figure 1 ), and end-of-life recycling rates for many of them are low to dismal.10 Moreover, for products with long service lifetimes such as turbine generators or high-speed locomotives, a stable set of materials must be available for maintenance and repair over several decades. It is therefore reasonable to ask: "Will supplies of any materials run out? If so, what and when?" In this article, we explore these questions by examining the present state of metal supply and demand, reviewing various studies of future needs, and then addressing potential limitations in response to those needs. Finally, we discuss some strategies and policies that corporations and governments might wish to consider in response to this information. Supply considerations Mining and processingMetals are not uniformly accessible in nature. Some metals form their own minerals, whereas some occur only in the lattices of other principal minerals (e.g., gallium in the aluminum ore bauxite). Average crustal abundance is not a good measure of overall availability, because geological processes create concentrations of individual elements or groups of elements Will metal scarcity impede routine industrial use? T.E. Graedel and Lorenz ErdmannMateria...

Challenges in Metal Recycling

“…Waste is lucrative business or, as they say in northern England: "Where there's muck there's brass." Since the early 1990s, attention has been diverted from waste remediation to waste prevention, with the emphasis on applying the principles of "green chemistry" (prevention is better than cure) (2). Now the focus is moving toward exploiting those wastes that are largely unavoidable.…”

“…The recycling of products in the "occasionally discarded" or "owned by somebody else" categories is complicated by the rapid expansion of the designer's materials palette that has taken place in the past several decades (1,2). Today, virtually every stable element in the periodic table is used so as to take advantage of its unique physical and chemical properties.…”

Metal resources, use and Criticality

“…Since 1900 the mine production of many metals has grown by one, two, or even three orders of magnitude (Graedel and Erdmann, 2012). For some metals, especially those used in high-tech applications, the rate of use has increased particularly strongly in recent decades, with more than 80 per cent of the total global cumulative production of platinum-group metals (PGM), indium, gallium and rare earth elements (REE) having taken place since 1980 (Hagelüken et al, 2012).…”

Integrated Modelling of the Global Cobalt Extraction, Supply, Price and Depletion of Extractable Resources Using the WORLD6 Model

“…Some authors have highlighted risks of resource depletion looming (Meadows et al 1972(Meadows et al , 1974(Meadows et al , 2005Heinberg 2001;Johnson et al 2007;Eilu 2011;Gordon et al 2006;Graedel et al 2004;Graedel and Erdmann 2012;Roland 2015;UNEP 2011aUNEP , b, c, 2012UNEP , 2013aRagnarsdottir et al 2012;Kwatra et al 2012;Nassar et al 2012;Bardi 2013;Elshakaki and Graedel 2013;Sverdrup et al 2013;Eliott et al 2014;Mohr et al 2014a;Northey et al 2014), a few also considering cobalt particularly (Alonso et al 2007;UNEP 2011aUNEP , b, c, 2012UNEP , 2013aRagnarsdottir et al 2012;Sverdrup et al 2013;Sverdrup and Ragnaradottir 2014). About 55% of the cobalt extraction is a by-product of nickel extraction, 35% of the extraction is a by-product of copper production and 10% comes from other sources like platinum group metals extraction and chromium refining.…”