Recycling of Critical Materials

Recycling of critical materials (elements) is a challenge faced especially in regions with negligible primary resources. The demand for a growing palette of elements and materials in technologies sectors with increasing importance like harvesting renewable energy and e-mobility is met by an increasing insecurity on the supply side. Resource efficiency regarding energy and costs has to be kept in mind when developing new routes for the recycling of e. g. elements like Lithium and rare earth elements. Slags are a somehow neglected recourse for many critical elements and there have been successful efforts to retrieve these materials from slags by engineering of artificial minerals (EAM) directly in the slag, that are rich in the desired element and relatively easy to separate. The formation processes of these EAMs are yet not fully understood.

In a collaborative effort together with the groups of Goldmann, Elwert and Schirmer the Fittschen group studies the influence of redox active components in modern recycling slags like Mn and V on the formation of EAMs.