Indispensable for smartphone, hard disk And batterieslike those for electric carthe Critic raw materials they are crucial for new technologies, the ecological transitionThe digital el ‘aerospace And accessing these increasingly rare resources is becoming a challenge for Europe. “These are 90 elements of the periodic table that at the time of their discovery were only a scientific curiosity,” the chemist Gaetano Guerra, emeritus professor of the University of Salerno, tells Ansa, on the sidelines of the conference on the critical raw materials organized in Rome by the Accademia dei Lincei.
“Research decades have meant that many of these are now useful for some innovative technologies. For example, at least 20 are used in cell phones. And then it was realized that they were hardly availablealso for geopolitical reasons“, Watch War, who has part of the organizing committee of the conference.” The decreasing availability of some raw materials necessary for new technologies arouses concerns shared by scientific and economic communities around the world “, observe the lynxes.
Lithium, nickel, cobalt And rare earth are the More requests among the Critic raw materials. Rare lands are in fact a subgroup of these and include 17 elements Chemists with unique magnetic and chemical properties, which make them indispensable for numerous technological and industrial applications. Among these, one of the most requested is the neodymium. “Also the copper He begins to be critical, “observes Guerra. In general, he continues,” there are significant chemical aspects relating toextractionat the purification and al recycling Of many criticism raw materials “. They are three interesting paths,” to be considered case by case, depending on the element “. For some, such as lithium, the possibility of replacing it with a more common element, such as sodium, is being studied.
To have a size of the problem, just take a look at the maps Relating to the concentration of the elements: “They speak for themselves”, observes Roberto Zoboli, Lincece and of the Catholic University of Milan. “In Europe there is very little”, observes, despite the great push of the green transition and the new technologies that this requires.
There are only Afnn extraction activities in France and Strike in Spain. Lithium extractive activity is instead particularly intense in China, Australia and Chile. “In Europe people don’t want mines – observes Zoboli – and one of the possible trends And recover The resulting material of the old mineswith anmore careful extraction“
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I am a journalist with over 6 years of experience working in the news industry. I currently work as an author for Global Happenings, and my coverage focuses on Technology news. I have written for various publications, including Reuters, The New York Times and The Guardian.
