University of Bayreuth, Press Release No. 79/2022 - 20 May 2022
New life cycle assessment study shows useful life of tech-critical metals to be short
Worldwide, almost all technology-intensive industries depend on readily available metallic raw materials. Consequently, precise and reliable information is needed on how long these raw materials remain in the economic cycle. To obtain the necessary data, a research team from the universities of Bayreuth, Augsburg and Bordeaux has now developed a new modelling method and applied it to 61 metals. The study published in Nature Sustainability shows that the metals needed for specific high-tech applications, which in many cases are scarce around the world, are in use for only a decade on average.
A pile of flushed coltan ore. Coltan ore is used to extract the rare transition metal tantalum, which is essential for making cell phones, for example. (c) iStock.