Godoy León María Fernanda, Blengini Gian Andrea, Dewulf Jo
Research Group Sustainable Systems Engineering (STEN), Ghent University, Coupure Links 653, Ghent 9000, Belgium.
European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Directorate for Sustainable Resources, Land Resources Unit, Via E. Fermi 2749, Ispra, VA 21027, Italy.
Resour Conserv Recycl. 2020 Jul;158:104842. doi: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.104842.
The use of cobalt has experienced a strong growth in the last decades. Due to its high economic importance and high supply risk, it has been classified as a critical raw material for the EU and other economies. Part of the EU's strategy is intended to secure its availability, through fostering its efficient use and recycling. The latter is affected by factors such as the amount of available end-of-life products, and their collection-to-recycling rate. A novel methodology to analyze the impact of these factors on the cobalt flows in society is the model MaTrace, which can track the fate of materials over time and across products. The MaTrace model was expanded, adapted, and applied to predict the fate of cobalt embedded in finished products in use in the EU, considering the underlying life cycle phases within the technosphere. Eleven scenarios were built, assessing different options in the implementation of relevant EU's policies. The flows were projected for a period of 25 years, starting in 2015. The results of the baseline scenario show that after 25 years, around 8% of the initial stock of cobalt stays in use, 3% is being hoarded by users, 28% has been exported, and 61% has been lost. The main contributors to the losses of the system are the non-selective collection of end-of-life products, and the export of end-of-life products, recycled cobalt and final products. The results of the scenarios show that higher collection-to-recycling rates and lower export could increase up to 50% the cobalt that stays in use.
在过去几十年中，钴的使用量大幅增长。由于其具有高度的经济重要性和较高的供应风险，已被欧盟和其他经济体列为关键原材料。欧盟战略的一部分旨在通过促进其高效利用和回收来确保其供应。后者受到诸如可用报废产品数量及其收集到回收率等因素的影响。一种分析这些因素对社会中钴流动影响的新颖方法是MaTrace模型，该模型可以跟踪材料随时间和跨产品的去向。MaTrace模型经过扩展、调整并应用于预测欧盟使用的制成品中所含钴的去向，同时考虑到技术圈中的潜在生命周期阶段。构建了11种情景，评估了欧盟相关政策实施中的不同选项。流量预测为期25年，从2015年开始。基线情景的结果表明，25年后，约8%的初始钴存量仍在使用，3%被用户囤积，28%已出口，61%已损失。系统损失的主要原因是报废产品的非选择性收集以及报废产品、回收钴和最终产品的出口。情景结果表明，更高的收集到回收率和更低的出口量可使仍在使用的钴增加多达50%。
