● Anthropogenic circularity science is an emerging interdisciplinary field. ● Anthropogenic circularity was one effective strategy against metal criticality. ● Carbon neutrality is becoming the new ...industry paradigm around the world. ● Growing circularity could potentially minimize the CO 2 emission.
Resource depletion and environmental degradation have fueled a burgeoning discipline of anthropogenic circularity since the 2010s. It generally consists of waste reuse, remanufacturing, recycling, and recovery. Circular economy and "zero-waste" cities are sweeping the globe in their current practices to address the world's grand concerns linked to resources, the environment, and industry. Meanwhile, metal criticality and carbon neutrality, which have become increasingly popular in recent years, denote the material's feature and state, respectively. The goal of this article is to determine how circularity, criticality, and neutrality are related. Upscale anthropogenic circularity has the potential to expand the metal supply and, as a result, reduce metal criticality. China barely accomplished 15 % of its potential emission reduction by recycling iron, copper, and aluminum. Anthropogenic circularity has a lot of room to achieve a win-win objective, which is to reduce metal criticality while also achieving carbon neutrality in a near closed-loop cycle. Major barriers or challenges for conducting anthropogenic circularity are deriving from the inadequacy of life-cycle insight governance and the emergence of anthropogenic circularity discipline. Material flow analysis and life cycle assessment are the central methodologies to identify the hidden problems. Mineral processing and smelting, as well as end-of-life management, are indicated as critical priority areas for enhancing anthropogenic circularity.
Anthropogenic mineral is absorbing wide concern in the context of circular economy, but its generation mechanism and quantity from product to waste remain unclear. Here we consider three product ...groups, 30 products, and use the revised Weibull lifespan model to map the generation of anthropogenic mineral and 23 types of the capsulated materials by targeting their evolution from 2010 to 2050. Total weight of anthropogenic mineral on average in China reached 39 Mt in 2010, but it will double in 2022 and quadruple in 2045. Stocks of precious metals and rare earths will increase faster than most base materials. The total economic potential in yearly-generated anthropogenic mineral is anticipated to grow markedly from 100 billion US$ in 2020 to 400 billion US$ in 2050. Furthermore, anthropogenic mineral of around 20 materials will be capable to meet projected consumption of three product groups by 2050.
Consumer electronics (CE) and electric vehicles (EVs) associated with renewable and sustainable energy have been rapidly changing human lifestyles and transportation habits since 1990s. These active ...innovations have resulted in a large amount of spent lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) in China. At least two problems are declining the sustainability of production and final disposal of LiBs: one is potential environmental and health risk, and the other is that more and more valuable resources are being stored in spent LiBs without appropriate recycling. We found that a lack of effective regulation, collection systems and recycling technologies are major barriers and challenges to solve the problems. And in order to develop a comprehensive management scheme for this waste stream in China, we proposed a three-pronged approach: (1) new regulation or policy is quite a necessity to deal with the challenges unique to spent LiBs recycling; (2) collection systems for CE and EV batteries can be substantially established based upon past experience of general e-waste management and extended producer responsibility, respectively; and (3) more emphasis needs to be placed on new technology for spent LiBs recycling, to tackle the large quantities of stored spent LiBs.
The rapid growth of the production of electrical and electronic products has meant an equally rapid growth in the amount of electronic waste (e-waste), much of which is illegally imported to India, ...for disposal presenting a serious environmental challenge. The environmental impact during e-waste recycling was investigated and metal as well as other pollutants e.g. polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were found in excessive levels in soil, water and other habitats. The most e-waste is dealt with as general or crudely often by open burning, acid baths, with recovery of only a few materials of value. As resulted of these process; dioxins, furans, and heavy metals are released and harmful to the surrounding environment, engaged workers, and also residents inhabiting near the sites. The informal e-waste sectors are growing rapidly in the developing countries over than in the developed countries because of cheapest labor cost and week legislations systems. It has been confirmed that contaminates are moving through the food chain via root plant translocation system, to the human body thereby threatening human health. We have suggested some possible solution toward in which plants and microbes combine to remediate highly contaminated sites.
•It systematically reviewed Environmental deterioration through e-waste recycling in India.•We found heavy metals (Cu, Pb, Cd and Cr) potentially serious concern at recycling site.•The heavy metals can entered human body through the direct and indirect exposure.•Regular monitoring required to examine the possibility of risk through e-waste mismanagement.•Further phytoremedial approach can be use as one of the possible solution for contaminated soil and improve the land quality.
The e-waste recycling sites are highly contaminated with heavy metals as well as other pollutants (e.g. PBDEs, PCBs) in excessive levels.
Stocks of virgin-mined materials utilized in linear economic flows continue to present enormous challenges. E-waste is one of the fastest growing waste streams, and threatens to grow into a global ...problem of unmanageable proportions. An effective form of management of resource recycling and environmental improvement is available, in the form of extraction and purification of precious metals taken from waste streams, in a process known as urban mining. In this work, we demonstrate utilizing real cost data from e-waste processors in China that ingots of pure copper and gold could be recovered from e-waste streams at costs that are comparable to those encountered in virgin mining of ores. Our results are confined to the cases of copper and gold extracted and processed from e-waste streams made up of recycled TV sets, but these results indicate a trend and potential if applied across a broader range of e-waste sources and metals extracted. If these results can be extended to other metals and countries, they promise to have positive impact on waste disposal and mining activities globally, as the circular economy comes to displace linear economic pathways.
Lithium-ion battery (LIB) applications in consumer electronics and electric vehicles are rapidly growing, resulting in boosting resources demand, including cobalt and lithium. So recycling of ...batteries will be a necessity, not only to decline the consumption of energy, but also to relieve the shortage of rare resources and eliminate the pollution of hazardous components, toward sustainable industries related to consumer electronics and electric vehicles. The authors review the current status of the recycling processes of spent LIBs, introduce the structure and components of the batteries, and summarize all available single contacts in batch mode operation, including pretreatment, secondary treatment, and deep recovery. Additionally, many problems and prospect of the current recycling processes will be presented and analyzed. It is hoped that this effort would stimulate further interest in spent LIBs recycling and in the appreciation of its benefits.
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•Manual dismantling is superior in spent high-power LiBs recycling.•Heated ionic liquid can effectively separate Al and cathode materials.•Fourier’s law was adopted to determine the ...heat transfer mechanism.•The process of spent LiBs recycling with heated ionic liquid dismantling was proposed.
Because of the increasing number of electric vehicles, there is an urgent need for effective recycling technologies to recapture the significant amount of valuable metals contained in spent lithium-ion batteries (LiBs). Previous studies have indicated, however, that Al and cathode materials were quite difficult to separate due to the strong binding force supplied by the polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), which was employed to bind cathode materials and Al foil. This research devoted to seek a new method of melting the PVDF binder with heated ionic liquid (IL) to separate Al foil and cathode materials from the spent high-power LiBs. Theoretical analysis based on Fourier’s law was adopted to determine the heat transfer mechanism of cathode material and to examine the relationship between heating temperature and retention time. All the experimental and theoretic results show that peel-off rate of cathode materials from Al foil could reach 99% when major process parameters were controlled at 180°C heating temperature, 300rpm agitator rotation, and 25min retention time. The results further imply that the application of IL for recycling Al foil and cathode materials from spent high-power LiBs is highly efficient, regardless of the application source of the LiBs or the types of cathode material. This study endeavors to make a contribution to an environmentally sound and economically viable solution to the challenge of spent LiB recycling.
Rare earth elements (REEs) are used in a wide range of products. The global demand for REEs is growing at a rate of 3.7-8.6% annually. Yttrium (Y), europium (Eu), cerium (Ce), lanthanum (La), and ...terbium (Tb) are used in the phosphors for fluorescent lamps (FLs). The authors review the challenges and techniques associated with the recycling and recovery of REEs in phosphors from waste FLs. The recovery rate and grade of resultant products and the processing costs are the primary factors to be considered regarding trichromatic phosphors enrichment and monochrome phosphor separation. Currently, most researchers have focused on the recovery of Y and Eu from red phosphor using hydrometallurgy methods, and on the difficulties of leaching Ce, La, Tb, and Eu in green and blue phosphors. The final recovery rate of Y and Eu can reach more than 80%, but a higher rate is desirable, considering the total value of the REEs in FLs. Studies on improving the leaching behavior of phosphors have been conducted; however, they present problems such as energy and agents consumption, and generation of viscous solution of silicate. Some pyrometallurgy and electrometallurgy approaches are also discussed.
•Annual and cumulative demand of lithium were predicted.•Cumulative demand for lithium under different recycling scenarios was addressed.•The future CE and EV industry, and EoL products recycling ...were prospected.
China is a major supplier of rechargeable lithium batteries for the world's consumer electronics (CE) and electric vehicles (EV). Consequently, China's domestic lithium resources are being rapidly depleted, and the development of the CE and EV industries will be vulnerable to the carrying capacity of China's lithium reserves. Here we find that lithium demand in China will increase significantly due to the continuing growth of demand for CE and the briskly emerging market for EV, resulting in a short carrying duration of lithium, even with full recycling of end-of-life lithium products. With these applications increasing at an annual rate of 7%, the carrying duration of lithium reserves will oblige the end-of-life products recycling with a 90% rate. To sustain the lithium industry, one approach would be to develop the collection system and recycling technology of lithium-containing waste for closed-loop lithium recycling, and other future endeavors should include developing the low-lithium battery and optimizing lithium industrial structure.
The amount of spent rechargeable lithium batteries (RLBs) is growing rapidly owing to wide application of these batteries in portable electronic devices and electric vehicles, which obliges that ...spent RLBs should be handled properly. Identification of spent RLBs can supply fundamental information for spent RLBs recycling. This study aimed to determine the differences of physical components and chemical compositions among various spent RLBs. All the samplings of RLBs were rigorously dismantled and measured by an inductive coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometer. The results indicate that the average of total weight of the separator, the anode and the cathode accounted for over 60% of all the RLBs. The weight ratio of valuable metals ranged from 26% to 76%, and approximately 20% of total weight was Cu and Al. Moreover, no significant differences were found among different manufacturers, applications, and electrolyte types. And regarding portable electronic devices, there is also no significant difference in the Co-Li concentration ratios in the leaching liquid of RLBs.
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