Keller and Anderson reported in 2018 that this issue of material criticality has been receiving much attention recently from governments all over the world. The United States and the European Union have two different definitions of what makes a material critical. The United States Department of Energy (DOE) defines criticality in two ways:
A) supply based risk based on projected market balances, competing energy demands, political, regulatory and social factors, co-production risks, and producer diversity; and,
B) importance to clean energy based on clean energy demand and substitutability. Net import reliance can hint at the supply based risk for materials.
The European Union defines a material as critical when “the risks of supply shortage and their impacts on the economy are higher than for most of the other raw materials”. From these two definitions, the European Union takes a broader approach to defining critical materials than the US DOE does. Essentially both government organizations define a material as critical when it provides essential properties to a modern engineered material and is subject to supply risk. The purpose of this paper is to summarize current efforts to increase supply stability of critical materials through by product or co product production alongside more common elements. This paper will cover byproduct production for cobalt, rare earth elements, lithium, gallium, germanium, graphite, manganese, vanadium, indium, and the platinum group metals.
A metal can be defined as a by product if the revenue gained from the sale of that metal is not enough to cover the full cost of the mine. On the other hand, if the full costs of the mine can be covered solely by the sale of the minor metal, then it is considered a co product. Minor metals, such as the critical materials listed above, are not economically viable to mine as a primary material and are therefore mined as a by product to materials that are able to produce enough revenue to cover mine expenses. This allows increased quantities of critical materials to be recovered and can help to relieve supply risks and shortages.
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