Manuscript Topics

According to the US Department of Interior, there are 50 mineral commodities currently deemed critical to the United States. They include aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barite, beryllium, bismuth, cerium, cesium, chromium, cobalt, dysprosium, erbium, europium, fluorspar, gadolinium, gallium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, holmium, indium, iridium, lanthanum, lithium, lutetium, magnesium, manganese, neodymium, nickel, niobium, palladium, platinum, praseodymium, rhodium, rubidium, ruthenium, samarium, scandium, tantalum, tellurium, terbium, thulium, tin, titanium, tungsten, vanadium, ytterbium, yttrium, zinc, and zirconium. Many of these critical materials are subject to supply risks but are essential to the economy and national security.

While critical materials are primarily mined from virgin ores, recycling technologies (hydrometallurgy, pyrometallurgy, and direct recycling) provide tremendous opportunities to recover value from waste materials and products. For example, the aggressive transition towards electric vehicles adoption would generate several hundred thousand tons of spent lithium-ion batteries in the next few years which could be used as feedstock to recycle Li, Co, Ni, and Mn. Recycling end-of-life products will reduce the amount of waste, support local economy, and conserve valuable resources.

To explore the best recycling strategies and maximize recycling benefits, this special issue aims to gather up-to-date knowledge related to the cutting-edge research in the broad scientific area of recycling critical materials for clean energy applications. Covered topics include, but are not limited to
• Novel sustainable extraction and recovery technologies for end-of life products, e.g., spent lithium-ion battery cells, and manufacturing scraps
• Improvement to technological hurdles for more cost-effective and environmentally friendly critical materials recycling
• Design for circular economy
• Techno-economic analysis that facilitates new recycling technology development for economic feasibility
• Life cycle assessment that evaluates current and future recycling technologies or pathways
• Reverse logistics and supply chain network optimization
Different types of manuscripts are welcome, including original research articles and critical review papers.

The paper, if officially accepted by Clean Technologies & Recycling, will be published in open access form soon after professional editing. No publication fee will be charged from the authors. If this is of interest, you are welcome to send a tentative title to the editorial office (cleantech@aimsiences.org) for checking the suitability.

Instruction for Authors
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Please submit your manuscript to online submission system
https://aimspress.jams.pub/