Electric vehicles are expected to dramatically increase the demand for nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co) over the next two decades. Europe is expected to face difficulties in securing a reliable, affordable and sustainable supply chain as the concentration of such minerals in the continent is scarce. The EU-funded ENICON project aims to improve the refining capacity of domestic and imported low-grade Ni/Co. ENICON’s metal recovery route using hydrochloric acid dispenses with the old-school hydro-based approach that involves continuously precipitating and redissolving metals. Thus, it reduces the amount of chemicals needed for metal dissolution, which result in the production of potentially harmful waste streams.
Project Videos
The Race To Beat China's De-Industrialisation Of Europe
The documentary investigates the challenges faced by Europe as it attempts to set up its own, fully integrated, mine-to-EV value chain.
The film acts as a wake-up call to avoid that Europe’s decarbonisation strategy leads to a nightmarish de-industrialisation. Instead, the documentary shows that Europe’s transition to climate neutrality can go hand in hand with a cleantech-based re-industrialisation. Made-in-Europe.
The Race To Beat China's De-Industrialisation Of Europe
A new paradigm to counter climate change
In this documentary Peter Tom Jones (Director KU Leuven Institute for Sustainable Metals and Minerals) searches for answers to Europe’s ambiguous relationship with primary mining of energy-transition metals. The documentary wants to trigger a more-informed debate about the three-pronged strategy of the European Commission in terms of raw materials for the climate transition and related planetary problems, i.e. (1) more and better recycling, (2) responsible sourcing from outside Europe; (3) responsible mining in Europe. The central questions tackled in the documentary are: how can Europe avoid the nightmarish scenario on becoming completely dependent on China et al. for (refined) rare earths, lithium, cobalt, nickel, tin etc. How can mining be(come) socially and environmentally responsible? How can we overcome the NIMBY syndrome
Full documentary - Responsible Mining in Europe: A new paradigm to counter climate change
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start_date
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end_date
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abstract
"Electric vehicles are expected to dramatically increase the demand for nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co) over the next two decades. Europe is expected to face difficulties in securing a reliable, affordable and sustainable supply chain as the concentration of such minerals in the continent is scarce. The EU-funded ENICON project aims to improve the refining capacity of domestic and imported low-grade Ni/Co. ENICON’s metal recovery route using hydrochloric acid dispenses with the old-school hydro-based approach that involves continuously precipitating and redissolving metals. Thus, it reduces the amount of chemicals needed for metal dissolution, which result in the production of potentially harmful waste streams."
uuid
"553580d1-6c86-4090-b153-b29656d10341"
label
text
"ENICON"
lang
"en"
description
text
"An EU research project on sustainable refining methods for the profitable recovery of nickel and cobalt"
