Assessing byproduct mining and metal recycling as indicators of material criticality

The development of advanced technologies relies on using a broader suite of elements from the periodic table, and many agree that the future availability of a set of 'critical materials' is an issue of global concern. However, assessments of material criticality are often overly general, leading to excessive concerns by policy makers and market participants. A quantitative and detailed investigation for supply risk indicators is necessary to further understand the risk associated with specific materials. This thesis investigates two aspects related to material criticality: 1) the status of a metal being produced as a byproduct; 2) The market impact of increased metal recycling. To identify the type of major risks associated with a byproduct metal, a techno-economic analysis is performed on 42 carrier-byproduct metal pairs, by employing cluster analysis and econometric modelling.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Fu, Xinkai.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Elsa A. Olivetti.

• Materials Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123618

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/123618