Handbook of Recycling

Chapter 10

Recycling of Rare Metals

Elinor Rombach,  and Bernd Friedrich     IME Process Metallurgy and Metal Recycling, RWTH Aachen University, Intzestraße 3, Aachen, Germany

Abstract

Most of the rare metals, described in this chapter, are used as key metals in numerous technical applications and were classified as “critical raw materials for the EU” by the European Commission in 2010: precious metals, rare earth metals, electronic metals, refractory metals and others like lithium and antimony. For these rare metals, main end-use-markets and a selection of developed and especially commercial practiced recycling routes are described. It is shown that conventional recycling processes for rare metals are often based on the process routes of mass metals ...