Recovery of Critical Raw Materials from Industrial Wastes by Advanced Methods

Dear Colleagues,

Raw Materials (RMs) are crucial to the world economy. They form a strong industrial base, producing a broad range of goods and applications used in everyday life. Reliable and unhindered access to certain RMs is a growing concern within the EU and across the globe. To address this challenge, the European Commission has created a list of 30 critical raw materials (CRMs) for the EU, which is subject to a regular review and update. CRMs combine RMs of high importance to the EU economy and of high risk associated with their supply; moreover, they are closely linked to clean technologies.

The use as secondary RMs from marginal resources as industrial wastes, is of strategic importance for industrial production, due to their high concentration on valuable metals.

RMs (i.e. gold, silver, copper, zinc, manganese, nickel) and CRMs (i.e. platinum, indium, cobalt, vanadium, magnesium, antimony, niobium and  rare hearts), are essential for the application of emerging modern technologies and to preserve the environment from technological waste, avoiding the release of pollutants components.

The advancement of the innovative processes such as bio-hydrometallurgy, electrowinning, phytoremediation, bioprecipitation, compared with the conventional processes, are given by the lowest environmental impact and energy consumption, and by the greater degree of purity of the valuable metals obtained.

The economic value of the advanced methods for recovery of critical raw materials from industrial wastes, which is closely linked to the choice and optimization of the experimental parameters of the processes, is of great importance.

For publication in this Special Issue, those articles that contribute to the improvement of the of the above-mentioned methods considered.

I hope you accept this invitation, and help us to create a high-impact and high-quality Special Issue on "Recovery of Critical Raw Materials From Industrial Wastes by Advanced Methods".

Dr. Stefano Ubaldini
Guest Editor

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• critical raw materials
• strategic raw materials
• low-grade georesources
• heavy metals
• bio-hydrometallurgy
• electrowinning
• phytoremediation
• bioprecipitation
• industrial wastes
• WEEE