Abstract Moving towards a low-carbon economy will imply a considerable increase in the deployment... more Abstract Moving towards a low-carbon economy will imply a considerable increase in the deployment of green technologies, which will in turn increase the demand of certain raw materials. In this paper, the material requirements for 2050 scenarios are assessed in terms of exergy to analyze the impact in natural resources in each scenario and identify which technologies are going to demand more resources. Renewable energy technologies are more mineral intensive than current energy sources. Using the International Energy Agency scenarios, from 2025 to 2050, total raw material demand is going to increase by 30%, being the transport sector the one that experiences the highest increase. Aluminum, iron, copper and potassium are those elements that present a higher share of the material needs for green technologies. Besides, there are five elements that experience at least a six-fold increase in demand in that period: cobalt, lithium, magnesium, titanium and zinc. Comparing those results with Greenpeace's AE [R] scenario, which considers a 100% renewable supply by 2050, this increase is even higher. Therefore, avoiding the dependency on fossil fuels will imply to accept the dependency on raw materials.
Current metal recycling techniques for end-of-life vehicles (ELV) are based on mechanical treatme... more Current metal recycling techniques for end-of-life vehicles (ELV) are based on mechanical treatments to mainly recover steel, aluminum, copper, and zinc alloys. Such techniques facilitate compliance with the ELV European Directive (2000/53/EC) target of achieving recyclability quotes of up to 85%. However, a vehicle can use more than 60 metals, some of them considered critical by international institutions, which end up downcycled as part of alloys or ultimately in landfills. This paper undertakes an assessment of the downcycling degree of minor metals in conventional vehicles using a SEAT Leon III model as a case study. Downcycling is assessed from a thermodynamic point of view using thermodynamic rarity, an indicator that is used as a weighting factor for the metals used in the car. The thermodynamic rarity of metals is a function of the quality of the minerals from which they stem, considering their relative abundance in Nature and the energy intensity required to extract and pro...
Around 75% of European population lives in urban and metropolitan areas, causing not only a size ... more Around 75% of European population lives in urban and metropolitan areas, causing not only a size increase of cities but also a mobility demand growth. Nowadays 2,7 daily trips per person are made and the consequence of this effect can be shown in the 7% increase of the passenger-kilometer indicator since last decade. Moreover, 49% of urban daily trips are made using private vehicles with the negative associated impact Some of the most known problem are: Traffic jams, which costs are estimated in 80.000 M€/year; GHG emissions, where urban mobility generate 23% of CO2 emissions or traffic accidents, where urban mobility is responsible for 38% of fatal urban traffic collisions.
Decarbonizing world economies implies the deployment of “green technologies”, meaning a renovatio... more Decarbonizing world economies implies the deployment of “green technologies”, meaning a renovation of the energy sector towards using renewable sources and zero emission transport technologies. This renovation will require huge amounts of raw materials, some of them with high supply risks. To assess such risks a new methodology is proposed, identifying possible bottlenecks of future demand versus geological availability. This has been applied to the world development of wind power, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal power and passenger electric vehicles for the 2016–2050 time period under a business as usual scenario considering the impact on 31 different raw materials. As a result, 13 elements were identified to have very high or high risk, meaning that these could generate bottlenecks in the future: cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, gallium, indium, lithium, manganese, nickel, silver, tellurium, tin and zinc. Tellurium, which is mostly demanded to manufacture solar photovoltaic ce...
The transition to full electromobility must be carefully evaluated, as large amounts of strategic... more The transition to full electromobility must be carefully evaluated, as large amounts of strategic metals will be required, for which there is presently little to no recovery or recycling (e.g. gold, silver, tantalum or cobalt). In this study, we perform a comprehensive metal assessment of two passenger cars (conventional and battery electric models) in terms of mass and thermodynamic rarity. Thermodynamic rarity is based on the property of exergy and is defined as “the amount of exergy resources needed to obtain a mineral commodity from average crustal concentration using the best available technology” (measured in kJ). Thus, the thermodynamic rarity approach assigns a greater exergetic value to scarce (understood as having a relative low average crustal concentration) and difficult-to-extract minerals. Of the 60 metals analyzed, almost 50 metals have been identified within the studied cars, representing 800 (conventional) and 1,200 kg (battery electric), showcasing the fact that a ...
The transport infrastructure generates benefits in efficiency and interchange of goods and people... more The transport infrastructure generates benefits in efficiency and interchange of goods and people. The increase of accessibility induced by transport infrastructure in a region causes employment growth, which causes a more positive economic future for the affected area by the infrastructure. The purpose of this book is presented to the practitioners, researchers and students as a comprehensive framework around the transport infrastructure for the following: i. Transport infrastructure, their economic influence and the territorial transformation. ii. The active mobility infrastructure, the design and the habitat influence in urban areas. iii. The fundamentals and main approaches around road infrastructure and pavement management. iv. The fundamentals and main approaches around road infrastructure, pavement design, assessment and management in road and airport pavement. v. An approach toward the assessment and management of railway infrastructure and the urban policies of tram systems...
Abstract Moving towards a low-carbon economy will imply a considerable increase in the deployment... more Abstract Moving towards a low-carbon economy will imply a considerable increase in the deployment of green technologies, which will in turn increase the demand of certain raw materials. In this paper, the material requirements for 2050 scenarios are assessed in terms of exergy to analyze the impact in natural resources in each scenario and identify which technologies are going to demand more resources. Renewable energy technologies are more mineral intensive than current energy sources. Using the International Energy Agency scenarios, from 2025 to 2050, total raw material demand is going to increase by 30%, being the transport sector the one that experiences the highest increase. Aluminum, iron, copper and potassium are those elements that present a higher share of the material needs for green technologies. Besides, there are five elements that experience at least a six-fold increase in demand in that period: cobalt, lithium, magnesium, titanium and zinc. Comparing those results with Greenpeace's AE [R] scenario, which considers a 100% renewable supply by 2050, this increase is even higher. Therefore, avoiding the dependency on fossil fuels will imply to accept the dependency on raw materials.
Current metal recycling techniques for end-of-life vehicles (ELV) are based on mechanical treatme... more Current metal recycling techniques for end-of-life vehicles (ELV) are based on mechanical treatments to mainly recover steel, aluminum, copper, and zinc alloys. Such techniques facilitate compliance with the ELV European Directive (2000/53/EC) target of achieving recyclability quotes of up to 85%. However, a vehicle can use more than 60 metals, some of them considered critical by international institutions, which end up downcycled as part of alloys or ultimately in landfills. This paper undertakes an assessment of the downcycling degree of minor metals in conventional vehicles using a SEAT Leon III model as a case study. Downcycling is assessed from a thermodynamic point of view using thermodynamic rarity, an indicator that is used as a weighting factor for the metals used in the car. The thermodynamic rarity of metals is a function of the quality of the minerals from which they stem, considering their relative abundance in Nature and the energy intensity required to extract and pro...
Around 75% of European population lives in urban and metropolitan areas, causing not only a size ... more Around 75% of European population lives in urban and metropolitan areas, causing not only a size increase of cities but also a mobility demand growth. Nowadays 2,7 daily trips per person are made and the consequence of this effect can be shown in the 7% increase of the passenger-kilometer indicator since last decade. Moreover, 49% of urban daily trips are made using private vehicles with the negative associated impact Some of the most known problem are: Traffic jams, which costs are estimated in 80.000 M€/year; GHG emissions, where urban mobility generate 23% of CO2 emissions or traffic accidents, where urban mobility is responsible for 38% of fatal urban traffic collisions.
Decarbonizing world economies implies the deployment of “green technologies”, meaning a renovatio... more Decarbonizing world economies implies the deployment of “green technologies”, meaning a renovation of the energy sector towards using renewable sources and zero emission transport technologies. This renovation will require huge amounts of raw materials, some of them with high supply risks. To assess such risks a new methodology is proposed, identifying possible bottlenecks of future demand versus geological availability. This has been applied to the world development of wind power, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal power and passenger electric vehicles for the 2016–2050 time period under a business as usual scenario considering the impact on 31 different raw materials. As a result, 13 elements were identified to have very high or high risk, meaning that these could generate bottlenecks in the future: cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, gallium, indium, lithium, manganese, nickel, silver, tellurium, tin and zinc. Tellurium, which is mostly demanded to manufacture solar photovoltaic ce...
The transition to full electromobility must be carefully evaluated, as large amounts of strategic... more The transition to full electromobility must be carefully evaluated, as large amounts of strategic metals will be required, for which there is presently little to no recovery or recycling (e.g. gold, silver, tantalum or cobalt). In this study, we perform a comprehensive metal assessment of two passenger cars (conventional and battery electric models) in terms of mass and thermodynamic rarity. Thermodynamic rarity is based on the property of exergy and is defined as “the amount of exergy resources needed to obtain a mineral commodity from average crustal concentration using the best available technology” (measured in kJ). Thus, the thermodynamic rarity approach assigns a greater exergetic value to scarce (understood as having a relative low average crustal concentration) and difficult-to-extract minerals. Of the 60 metals analyzed, almost 50 metals have been identified within the studied cars, representing 800 (conventional) and 1,200 kg (battery electric), showcasing the fact that a ...
The transport infrastructure generates benefits in efficiency and interchange of goods and people... more The transport infrastructure generates benefits in efficiency and interchange of goods and people. The increase of accessibility induced by transport infrastructure in a region causes employment growth, which causes a more positive economic future for the affected area by the infrastructure. The purpose of this book is presented to the practitioners, researchers and students as a comprehensive framework around the transport infrastructure for the following: i. Transport infrastructure, their economic influence and the territorial transformation. ii. The active mobility infrastructure, the design and the habitat influence in urban areas. iii. The fundamentals and main approaches around road infrastructure and pavement management. iv. The fundamentals and main approaches around road infrastructure, pavement design, assessment and management in road and airport pavement. v. An approach toward the assessment and management of railway infrastructure and the urban policies of tram systems...
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