CD Laboratory for Extractive Metallurgy of Technological Metals

Metals are a central component of many modern consumer goods. At the same time, their primary extraction is always energy-intensive. Recycling from used appliances is considered an important resource, but is often extremely difficult due to their low content.

Technology metals occupy a central position as an important component of many everyday devices in the modern, industrialised world, such as mobile phones, laptops, household appliances, etc. They are difficult to extract and cannot be substituted in the short to medium term. These elements only occur in relatively small quantities in the earth's crust, are difficult to extract and cannot be substituted in the short to medium term. Furthermore, some do not have independent deposits, but can only be extracted as by-products of bulk metals. Therefore, their production volume cannot be easily expanded. Only limited industrial-scale technologies are available to recycle them from old appliances. However, a significant increase in the quantities obtained from recycling is made more difficult by various factors, such as the increasing complexity of the products and their usually very low content of these elements. As a result, they can often only be recovered as by-products of bulk metals.

The complexity of used consumer goods or other alternative raw material sources requires an industrial network of many metallurgical plants to maximise the extraction of all valuable metals and ultimately overcome the challenges of import dependencies, supply bottlenecks, etc.

For this reason, the CD Laboratory is researching possibilities for the appropriate adaptation or modification of existing process steps, suitable technology combinations and new, innovative processes for extracting the technology metals from different materials. In addition to a comprehensive characterisation of the starting materials (chemical composition and phase structure), fundamental investigations into the behaviour of these elements in the various processes are necessary.

This should result in a better understanding of the technological possibilities and limitations of the various metallurgical processes with regard to the extraction of technology metals, which must be taken into account when implementing them on an industrial scale.