Electrochemical mining of critical metals.

Abstract

Humanity development has been driven by new materials since the dawn of time. Methods to mine, process, and use metals, as well as their importance for a certain age - their criticality - always evolved in parallel with civilization. With growing demand for resources, supply chain risks and urgent need to transition to a circular economy, it is imperative to develop sustainable, decentralized alternatives to traditional mining of the current critical metals. In this review, we are giving an overview of existing approaches towards critical metals mining, discussing the limitations and risks associated with these methods, and introducing emerging approaches to obtain them. Our key focus is the extraction, separation, and production of critical metals enabled by electrochemical processes, which we define as electrochemical mining. As we introduce the fundamentals behind these methods and discuss their attributes at different scales, from the electrode to the system level, we provide the state-of-the-art use cases of several key element groups such as Li, noble metals, and 3d-metals in electrochemical mining. Overall, this review aims to provide a comprehensive summary of the progress obtained so far in this emerging field and identify the key directions for its further development.