Digitally enabled sustainable metals recycling for circular economies - SUMER

Started

Renewable Energy Sources
Other Cross-Cutting Technologies or Research
Not Energy Related
Hydrogen and Fuel Cells

Basic and strategic applied research

PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Metallurgy and Materials)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Dr P Angeli
Chemical Engineering
University College London

Standard

EPSRC

01 March 2025

29 February 2028

36 months

£1,428,842

Manufacturing

London

Manufacturing and the Circular Economy

Dr P Angeli, Chemical Engineering, University College London

Professor ES Fraga, Chemical Engineering, University College London
Dr F Galvanin, University College London

Digital technologies promise to revolutionise sustainable processing and pave the way to a circular economy. Central to a circular economy is the recycling and reuse of materials, while maintaining their highest possible value, for resource efficiency and waste minimization. Metals, particularly critical and platinum group (PGM) metals, are indispensable in renewable low carbon and hydrogen technologies and essential for the UK clean energy transition with demand expected to be up to 600 Mt by 2050. Metals are used as catalysts for efficient feedstock processing (ammonia, refineries) and emission control (Pt, Pd, Rh), and in electronics, fibre optics and flat screen displays. They are mainly obtained from mining which is environmentally damaging and concentrated in very few countries (such as China, South Africa) making their availability susceptible to geopolitics and posing threats to supply chains. Recovery of metals from increasing volumes of waste is thus crucial. To recover the metals, the hydrometallurgical route is an environmentally friendly option which offers high recovery and selectivity. Main operations in this route involve dissolution and solvent extraction. For the final isolation of the separated metals, precipitation or electrochemical approaches can be used. Separation processes are traditionally carried out in batch systems. These suffer from non-uniformities and are difficult to characterise, monitor and digitise, hampering the development of suitable predictive mathematical models needed for process design and control. Intensified flow processing in small channels emerges as a transformative solution to enable digitisation of separations for metals recovery and to transition to fully continuous end to end processing. Crucially important is the potential to increase throughput in a modular way, whereby the number of channels is increased rather than their volume. Our vision in this proposal is to establish digitalised sustainable technologies for recycling of metals based on continuous intensified processing. We have developed a research programme to enable the design of flexible, adaptive, efficient flow processes through key digital tools that respond to the challenges of variable feed compositions, multicomponent mixtures and presence of polymers, solvent use, and high quality metal purification and selectivity requirements. We will demonstrate the potential of the digital technologies with case studies co-created through our strategic partnerships with Johnson Matthey, a global leader on metals recovery for sustainable processes, JIVA, an innovation-based SEM for recyclable printed circuits, West Sussex County and Newham Councils interested in technological waste recycling and public engagement and SHIFT that supports East London innovators. To realise the vision, we will capitalise on the expertise of our team on process design, modelling, intensified processing, measurement, industrial metals recycling and technologytranslation to deliver on the following objectives: Create a multi-criteria optimization based methodology for the design of the processes, taking into account model uncertainty and variable feeds for robust performance; Develop predictive dynamic models for process steps with uncertainty quantification for robust operation using model-based experimental design techniques; Establish experimental layouts of intensified processes with embedded sensors for data generation and model validation; Develop prototype digital twin units to aid technology translation and public engagement activities. Our proposal will digitise metal recycling processes in support of a circular economy and underpin a resilient, environmentally sustainable and reliable by design digital future in support of the UK's net zero targets.

02/07/25