Criticality assessment of metal resources in China

Wenyi Yan; Zhaolong Wang; Hongbin Cao; Yi Zhang; Zhi Sun

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.102524

Criticality assessment of metal resources in China

iScience. 2021 May 8;24(6):102524. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102524. eCollection 2021 Jun 25.

Authors

Wenyi Yan^{1

2}, Zhaolong Wang³, Hongbin Cao^{1

2}, Yi Zhang¹, Zhi Sun^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Engineering Research Center of Process Pollution Control, Division of Environment Technology and Engineering, National Engineering Laboratory for Hydrometallurgical Cleaner Production Technology, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 1 Beierjie, Zhongguancun, Haidian District, Beijing 100190, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
³ Solid Waste and Chemicals Management Centre, Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Beijing 100029, China.

Abstract

With the development of modern industries, the sustainability of critical resources has attracted worldwide attention considering the entire supply chain. With a large industrial sector size in China, a safe supply of metal resources is crucial to ensure the effective operation of the whole industry. Although specific criticality analyses have been applied to identify critical resources in some regions, including Europe and the USA, they are not ready to be directly applied in the case of China because the structure of China's industry is remarkably different from other areas. In this research, a three-dimensional methodology considering supply safety, domestic economy, and environmental risk is demonstrated, where Chinese industrial conditions are specifically considered. In total, 64 materials were introduced to perform the criticality assessment, and 18 metals were classified with a high criticality degree in the three-dimensional criticality space. With the obtained findings decision-makers can formulate strategic deployment to promote resource management.

Keywords: environmental science; materials class; materials science; metals.