Authored by Farouk Tedjar*
Introduction
Today world population increase and related economy expands are accompanied with important growth of substantial need for natural resources. Consequently, in order to sustain same level of economic activities a great amount of energy and resource are consumed [1]. The energy preoccupation linked to a potential “peak oil” introduces a strong actions on fuel saving and utilization of clean energy. In particular emerging of climate changing problematic and global warming issues from Kyoto protocol [2,3] with impact of greenhouse gases and CO2 are the most important challenges the last 3 decades.
Within all resources and just after water and energy, in third position we have the metals. In other hand today, no doubt those industrial emerging segments such as s solar panel, wireless products, and e-mobility and wind turbines will have a great growth and demand. However almost all those equipment are using strategic and critical metals facing a security of supply.
In particular, the situation of pressure on strategic and critical materials was recently completed by the Geopolitical aspect coming out from the high level of availability (and then control) of some natural resources such as Cobalt (65% owned by Congo) and Rare Earths (85% owned by China). Today the consideration on economic importance vs. supply risk of each basic materials leads to a strong increase of interest on recycling. In front fear of scarcity of resources in recent years, several initiatives were enhancing the deep transition from a traditional linear economy to a new mode of resource flow based on circular economy [4,5].
Among the energy sector, batteries are the commercial segment facing the most important growth of last decades. In fact, the development of electric and electronic devices is giving now the model of consumption to “a wireless age”. The growth of miniaturization in one hand and energy density need lead to rapid development of new chemistry for batteries as observed during last decade particularly in secondary systems. However, dark side of the progress is always in environment impact and scarcity of resources. Bit implementation of collection and recycling processes could lead to a large decrease of environment impact and important recovery of resources. To maintain a sustainable and safe supply chain to the economic cycle of the battery segment, it is critical to operate a deep change. The Circular Economy is the most relevant to face this challenge [6].
Urban Mine and Circular Economy
This new concept of Circular Economy is based on strong modification of traditional model based on “production of goods – use said goods by the society– put through away at end of life”. One of the pillars of the circular economy is recycling in order that wastes will be converted to valuable materials substituting the natural resources. A link between recycling /recovering/reuse and circular economy is the status of the waste. For this reason, “Urban Mining”, concept developed since 2004 [7] is now well integrated in the recycling and sustainability landscape and largely used as key concept within any end-of-life sustainability approach. Scarcity or strategic metals [4,5] as well as Climate Change issues [8,9] are pillars supporting this concept We built this concept on our experience on primary recycling batteries [10], Steel Dust from electrical arc furnace [11], Fly ash from Municipal Solid Waste Incineration [12], Asbestos conversion [13] and lithium ion [14]. In particular, within a study for EU Commission during 5th Framework Program (1999-2002) we observed that lithium content of batteries is higher than the most concentration natural deposit [15]. From this study, the name was registered [7]. The concept is based on the need to shift from traditional mine with classical ores to “Urban Mine “with new “Urban ores” as illustrated in Figure 1.
Urban Mine and Sustainable City
Circular Economy and “Urban Mine” are two key for the achievement of the Sustainable City. Every family as large producer of plastic, paper, organic wastes, aluminum, batteries, lamp and electronic used goods. They are the “daily “feeder” of the “Urban Mine”, while the organic domestic wastes are important source of energy (incineration, methane conversion) or materials for agriculture (composting). In particular, for countries likes Europe, USA, Japan Korea, Singapore, today the resources of critical and strategic metals are not in far countries owner of the natural resources but within the cities.
Clearly today, the Cities face economic growth from waste resource use while decreasing the environmental impact, which introduce a beneficial balance on economic, environmental and social sides going forward to the Sustainable City. [17,18]. Exploitation of the “Mine in the City” can contribute largely to achievement of Sustainable City.
Battery Segment
The development of electric and electronic devices is giving now the model of consumption to “a wireless age”. The growth of miniaturization in one hand and energy density need lead to rapid development of new chemistry for batteries as observed during last decade particularly in secondary systems. The growth of miniaturization in one hand and energy density need lead to rapid development of new chemistry for batteries as observed during last decade particularly in secondary systems [19] (Figure 2).
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