Circular economy to produce critical raw materials from water in the mining industry
The European REECOVERY project aims to demonstrate a process capable of producing critical raw materials such as rare earths, copper, cobalt and zinc from contact water from the Minera Los Frailes mine in Aznalcóllar (Seville).
These raw materials are essential for developing low-carbon technologies such as electric cars or wind turbines, but they are not produced within our continent. This means that they have to be imported from outside countries, which means high costs, commercial dependence and an import process that is not environmentally sustainable.
REECOVERY, within the framework of the European EIT RawMaterials project, has managed to reduce this dependence, developing and validating a system for recovering these critical raw materials such as rare earths, copper, cobalt and zinc from contact water from the mining industry, while promoting the circular economy.
