End-of-life nickel recycling: Energy security and circular economy development

Abstract

This study examines the consumption of nickel resources in China from 2004 to 2022 and utilizes data from the International Energy Agency as a foundation to predict future consumption and End-of-life (EoL) nickel recycling volumes by a novel dynamic material flow analysis (D-MFA) model. Distinguished from the preceding MFA studies, we highlight the future nickel stocks and flows, and the logistic function as well as linear step-length method are applied to assess EoL nickel recycling under five different demand scenarios and recycling assumptions. The findings show that the share of EoL nickel secondary supply currently stands at 27% of overall nickel demand. In addition, the nickel demand curve under different recycling conditions also reveals a projected gap of approximately 4.4 million tons between nickel supply and demand until 2050. The empirical results demonstrate a significant growth of nickel demand in the new energy battery industry, while nickel consumption in the stainless steel is tending towards saturation. Moreover, although the recycling rate of nickel is expected to keep rising, the consumption of nickel remains significantly higher than the recycling volume, entailing a long-term dependence on imported nickel.