Collaboration Accelerates Progress in Critical Materials Recycling

Avoiding the worst impacts of climate change will require massive transformation of our energy sector, moving away from fossil fuel sources to electrification powered by renewable and carbon-free sources. The technologies that can support this transformation however rely on a suite of materials whose current production lies largely outside of the United States. Projections of surging demand and insufficient supply for clean energy critical materials (CMs) are thus driving significant federal efforts to expand and diversify the production of these materials, vital for technologies such as electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar power. Expanding mining and mineral processing in the U.S. and allied nations will be necessary, but improvements in recycling and recovery of critical materials from end-of-life products and secondary sources are also needed to meet demand and reduce dependence on primary sources. Addressing demand by developing alternative materials and energy systems with reduced critical material content is also essential.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Innovation (CMI) Hub is focused on early-stage research for technologies to enhance the resilience of supply chains for critical materials essential to the clean energy transition. CMI conducts research in three focus areas that represent different but complementary approaches to addressing our critical material challenges: improving and expanding primary production, developing substitutes to reduce CM demand, and circular economy approaches, focused on recycling. A fourth focus area develops and applies crosscutting tools to support the other focus areas; these tools include thermodynamic modeling and data collection, criticality and supply chain research, and economic, environmental, and social impact analysis. CMI intentionally encourages interaction between and within focus areas. In this presentation we will provide examples of how such collaboration accelerates progress in the development of circular economy approaches, including technoeconomic assessments that identify research targets to improve economic competitiveness, thermodynamic analyses that guide selection of chemical reagents and conditions, and life cycle and environmental analyses that suggest alternative reagents or processing routes.