Today, on Google, if you search “What is the energy transition?” you might see a lot of information about using more renewable energy technologies for green transformation. But, I would like to express my thoughts differently as a mining engineer and be passionately committed to this path. Generally, low-carbon technologies require many times more mineral input than average compared to fossil fuel-based technologies. Statistics demonstrate that in manufacturing an electric car, it is necessary to use six times more minerals than a conventional vehicle. Another fact is that the construction of an onshore wind farm requires 9-fold more raw materials compared to a gas-fired power plant. When these minerals that give direction to the energy route of the world are scrutinised, it can be said that these minerals are generally collected under the umbrella of ‘critical raw materials’ and are also referred to in the literature as “energy transition minerals”.
What are the criticial raw materials? Some of them are very popular for us, like lithium, cobalt, silicon etc. On the other hands, even as a mining engineers, we are also working on some minerals on exploration phase and production as well, such as graphite, vanadium, rare-earth elements, gallium… In terms of reserve, China is really dominating the production of 30 out of 50 critical raw materials. Countries such as Australia, South Africa and Russia are on the list as followers of the leader. In this situation, almost all the votes go to the China! So, why do we need to understand the importance of these minerals?
Simply clear, since to clearly establihs the needs for critical materials and to overcome material problems, it is necessary to develop an understanding of which minerals are comprised in clean energy sources and how they will be supplied. If we need to talk about some solid stuff, for instance, aluminium, silver, copper, lead, nickel, molybdenum and indium are generally used in solar PV technology. It consists of 88% aluminium and 11% copper by weight in its components. Based on the mentioned increase rate, it is predicted that 160 million tons of aluminium and 20 million tons of copper will be required by 2050. Compared to the current situation, it illustates that the demand for both mentioned minerals will be more than 350%. You now might be thinking about this, so what does this mean for us? Basically this means, more minerals, more mining, more waste and so on.. Remember that, I mentioned in the previous blog, we have already generated 7 millions of mine waste in a year. In addition to these, some research has been showing that PV panel waste, which was calculated as about 50,000 tons in 2020 in Europe, is expected to exceed 1,500,000 tons in 2030. In lithium-ion batteries used for fixed storage, it is thought that the waste volume of nearly 40,000 tons in 2020 will jump to 240.000 tons in 2030. These numerics are going to be massive! But, there are, at least, some good news, we can benefit from the secondary materials or old mine to diminish the waste we produce. We may be make 1,500,000 tons waste of glass, metals and silicon because of the PV panel, but, these minerals are also 95% can be recyclable.
Moreover, there are several research project that carried out by some mining companies which give us very valuable points. To give an example, Kolwezi tailings project, also known as Roan Waste Treatment, which was developed between 2004 and 2009 in the Kolwezi region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, it was aimed to recover copper and other important metals from the mining wastes in the region. This project has been developed by Canadian mining companies Adastra Minerals and First Quantum Minerals. Materials from Kingamyambo tailings dam and Musunoi river tailings were used as a source for this project. A facility was built to process cobalt and copper from these two sources, and the total amount of metal in the waste was estimated to be 1,676,000 tons for copper and 363,000 tons for cobalt, with a grade of 1.49% and 0.32%, respectively. And, after drilling studies (112,8 Mt) and sampling procedures, the data was obtained for copper as a 1.49% (3.705 M lb) and for cobalt as a 0.32% (796 M lb)- all these were proven 97% to JORC. – If you are interested in more detail, there are some for you- Copper solvent exchange-electrowinning (SW-EX) method was used in the first cycle for metal recovery. Secondly, for the recovery of cobalt, the process consisting of many circuits such as sulphur dioxide, ion exchange and solvent exchange was designed and finally recovered with solvent exchange-electrowinning (SW-EX). Additionality to the high metal content of the resources, it was aimed to produce 70,000 tonnes of copper and 10,000 tonnes of cobalt from 3 million tons of tailings per year in this project.
All in all,
93% copper and 76% cobalt recovered.
The metal qualities gained are above 99% for both metal groups.
Potentially the largest and lowest cobalt production in the world (Estimated at $2.15/lb) with this project.
Made of low-cost copper (Estimated at 37c/lb).
A resource life of 35 years has been defined for the project.
Environmentally and socially, the region has been revitalized and resource maximization has been taken into account.
A large number of soil sampling was performed with the project, new study models were developed for groundwater quality, and great steps were taken in terms of protecting ecology with waste management studies.
These actually means, we really have to focus on working on more mine recovery application and using more technology. There are several potential secondary source, such as extractive waste, landfill, red muds, fertilizer, still are in progress to developed. And, finally, it is better to evaluate which kind of technologies we are really consider, while the world turns its route to green energy resources in order to make the ecosystem more sustainable in line with the climate movement, the need for minerals to be used to meet the increasing green energy technology investments is increasing day by day.