Advances in electrometallurgy for sustainable metal production

Abstract

Metal production technologies are quite old, and they rely on carbon-based reductants and fossil fuels. The industry has recently substituted electricity as a heating source. Finding green reductants has been a long-running endeavor, nevertheless. In place of carbon, electrons were used as alternate reductants in electrometallurgy. Electricity is used to provide both the heating and chemical reaction energy needed, making it possible to achieve the goal of net-zero metal production. Aluminum was the first metal electrochemically smelted in molten halides; since then, numerous advancements in this field have been made. To list a few, inert cathode and anode materials are being emerged to reduce the emission of toxic and greenhouse gases. Graphite is the typical anode used in high-temperature operations, which when interacted with released anodic oxygen leads to CO2 formation. In addition, novel electrochemistry has been developed to produce reactive metals such as titanium that cannot be produced via carbothermic reduction or electrolysis in aqueous solutions. This chapter briefly covers the recent developments aiming at sustainable extraction of various metals including Ti, Si, Cu, Ta, V, and Fe. The developed electrometallurgical technologies for recycling of valuable metals from urban and industrial waste are also discussed.