Strategic Metals and Value-Added Products from Recycled Waste Streams via Process Electrification

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Among various commodities, some metals are considered strategic in developed countries including Canada. They are essential for today's and tomorrow's advanced clean- and high-tech industries such as renewable energy, electric vehicles, electrical and electronic equipment, aviation, military devices, and emerging quantum computers/telecommunications. However, there are serious issues in extraction of such metals from three different perspectives: 1) The extraction from primary (natural) resources is not an interesting path due to technical, economic and environmental constraints. 2) A considerable mass of such metals, nested in a complex matrix of end-of-life (EOL) materials, is landfilled or stored in graveyards, but there is a lack of efficient, clean, and purposeful recycling processes. 3) Metals waste streams usually contain plastics in their vicinity, which would cause serious health and environmental issues if landfilled or recycled improperly due to their hazardous halogenated flame retardants and furans. Consequently, having rate of EOL generation ever increasing, we are facing with environmental issues and deterioration of resource efficiency. I believe there should be a total diversion from landfills. Nothing is a waste! We need to learn from nature: the waste of a species is the resource of another. Thus, I am going to focus on the value chain: from wastes to value added materials, contributing to the circular economy, while providing environmental preservation or, possibly, improvements. My long-term objective of the proposed research plan is to develop innovative process electrification concepts for development of valorization technologies to extract strategic metals (such as lithium, rare earth elements, precious metals, electronic metals and refractory metals) as well as value added-products from metals waste streams. Process electrification is a sustainable path to low-carbon-foot-print manufacturing of fuels, chemicals, and materials.   My short-term objectives are about a proper understanding of physicochemical properties of EOL materials to employ induction heating with creative approaches as a starting point to reach out the long-term objective. Two bachelor's students, one master's student and two PhD students will be trained at an equal, diverse and inclusive research environment. At least, 9 research articles, 5 conference articles, 2 patents, and most likely a new spinoff company are expected from my research plan.  Outcomes of this research will be beneficial to Canada in terms of securing a supply chain of its demanding metals, diversion of plastics from landfilling, independency of foreign suppliers, environment protection, creation of jobs at different levels of expertise, technology transfer, and as a global leader in development of advanced electrified process technologies. Acquired expertise and qualifications of HQPs will be in high demand in the industry and Canada.