Decreasing Ore Grades in Global Metallic Mining: A Theoretical Issue or a Global Reality?

Calvo, Guiomar; Mudd, Gavin Mark; Valero, Alicia; Valero, Antonio

doi:10.3390/resources5040036

Cited by 235 publications

(124 citation statements)

References 25 publications

(28 reference statements)

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“…In some cases, technology improvements could partially offset decreasing ore grades (Swart and Dewulf ). Yet, as demonstrated by Calvo and colleagues () for the case of copper, ore grades have generally declined throughout history leading to greater energy costs.…”

Section: Methodsologymentioning

confidence: 97%

Vehicles and Critical Raw Materials: A Sustainability Assessment Using Thermodynamic Rarity

Ortego

Valero

et al. 2018

J of Industrial Ecology

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SummaryThe changing material composition of cars represents a challenge for future recycling of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). Particularly, as current recycling targets are based solely on mass, critical metals increasingly used in cars might be lost during recycling processes, due to their small mass compared to bulk metals such as Fe and Al. We investigate a complementary indicator to material value in passenger vehicles based on exergy. The indicator is called thermodynamic rarity and represents the exergy cost (GJ) needed for producing a given material from bare rock to the market. According to our results, the thermodynamic rarity of critical metals used in cars, in most cases, supersedes that of the bulk metals that are the current focus of ELV recycling. While Fe, Al, and Cu account for more than 90% of the car's metal content, they only represent 60% of the total rarity of a car. In contrast, while Mo, Co, Nb, and Ni account for less than 1% of the car's metal content, their contribution to the car's rarity is larger than 7%. Rarity increases with the electrification level due to the greater amount of critical metals used; specifically, due to an increased use of (1) Al alloys are mainly used in the car's body-in-white of electric cars for light-weighting purposes, (2) Cu in car electronics, and (3) Co, Li, Ni, and rare earth metals (La, Nd, and Pr) in Li-ion and NiMH batteries. Keywords:automobile industry critical raw materials end-of-life vehicles (ELV) exergy sustainable mobility thermodynamic rarity Supporting information is linked to this article on the JIE website

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Section: Methodsologymentioning

confidence: 97%

Vehicles and Critical Raw Materials: A Sustainability Assessment Using Thermodynamic Rarity

Ortego

Valero

et al. 2018

J of Industrial Ecology

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“…This behavior has been empirically demonstrated for several commodities (Calvo et al. ; Mudd , ). In this sense, recycling allows reducing primary consumption and consequently energy costs.…”

Section: Thermodynamic Raritymentioning

confidence: 63%

Thermodynamic Approach to Evaluate the Criticality of Raw Materials and Its Application through a Material Flow Analysis in Europe

Calvo

Valero

2017

J of Industrial Ecology

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SummaryThis paper makes a review of current raw material criticality assessment methodologies and proposes a new approach based on the second law of thermodynamics. This is because conventional methods mostly focus on supply risk and economic importance leaving behind relevant factors, such as the physical quality of substances. The new approach is proposed as an additional dimension for the criticality assessment of raw materials through a variable denoted "thermodynamic rarity," which accounts for the exergy cost required to obtain a mineral commodity from bare rock, using prevailing technology. Accordingly, a given raw material will be thermodynamically rare if it is: (1) currently energy intensive to obtain and (2) scarce in nature. If a given commodity presents a high risk in two of the three dimensions (economic importance, supply risk, and thermodynamic rarity), it is proposed to be critical. As a result, a new critical material list is presented, adding to the 2014 criticality list of the European Commission (EC) Li, Ta, Te, V, and Mo. With this new list and using Sankey diagrams, a material flow analysis has been carried out for Europe (EU-28) for 2014, comparing the results when using tonnage and thermodynamic rarity as units of measure. Through the latter, one can put emphasis on the quality and not only on the quantity of minerals traded and domestically produced in the region, thereby providing a tool for improving resource management.

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“…The sustainability of gold mining pointed out by Mudd (2007) and his broader discussion (Mudd 2010), embracing the triple bottom line (social, economic and environmental aspects), give us a consideration about an industry that profits over exploration of finite resources with well known environmental impacts and its sustainable future, which depends on more complex debates involving economics, scientific advances, social and environmental concerns rather than just an ecological matter. Calvo et al (2016) examine the copper mining industry quantifying the increases of production and energy consumption, a relation that shows fewer results with more depletion of resources.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mining and the Sustainable Development Goals: A Systematic Literature Review

Mesquita

Klein

Xavier

et al. 2017

GREE

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193 United Nations members are signatories of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Even though it does not make it legally binding to the country members, the SDGs establishment incites national and managerial frameworks to achieve the SDGs. The mining industry inserts itself in this context by its global presence and frequent location within ecologically sensitive and less developed areas. This paper aims to consolidate the state of academic research on mining, sustainability and sustainable development, by organizing the results of previous studies within a systematic review on the SDGs set. To do so, the ISI Web of Science TM Core Collection database was chosen as a database of record, as it is one of the most widespread databases of academic journals. We have used all years available in the ISI database, from 1945 to 2016 (for complete years). The systematic review process comprised of five steps: (i) to search terms [("sustainability" or "sustainable development") and mining] on the database and to apply filters of criteria; (ii) organizing papers; (iii) metrics and relations between papers and authors; (iv) classification of the results through content analysis techniques; and (v) synthesis. The results were divided in two groups: the highly cited and the most recent papers, to include papers that have academic impact and those which show the newest contributions to the field. The results showed that, in spite of a growing amount of publications in the past years that relates to mining and sustainability, the main focus of these publications are still on the environmental dimensions of the UN goals. This suggests that more practical and academic work in the mining sector are required to fill in the blank spaces regarding the other set of goals that compose the SDGs framework.

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Decreasing Ore Grades in Global Metallic Mining: A Theoretical Issue or a Global Reality?

Cited by 235 publications

References 25 publications

Vehicles and Critical Raw Materials: A Sustainability Assessment Using Thermodynamic Rarity

Vehicles and Critical Raw Materials: A Sustainability Assessment Using Thermodynamic Rarity

Thermodynamic Approach to Evaluate the Criticality of Raw Materials and Its Application through a Material Flow Analysis in Europe

Mining and the Sustainable Development Goals: A Systematic Literature Review

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