From waste to opportunity: designing solutions for resource recovery

Through an interdisciplinary approach and multiple collaborations, the aim is devising technologies for separation, recovery, utilization and valorisation of resources, currently highly focused on critical raw materials, envisioning global excellence for innovation in turning waste streams into valuable resources, supporting sustainable development and the transition to circular economy.

The main pathway is to integrate and intensify processes to the treatment of waste streams, by applying combinations of classical separation operations, e.g., crystallization, membranes or adsorption, with cutting-edge technologies like ultrasound, laser and soft matter, and among them. This gives us processes such as simultaneous crystallization, membrane-assisted crystallization, or mixed matrix membranes for simultaneous adsorption and filtration; and even laser or soft-matter induced crystallization. Yet the road from fundamentals to industry still needs to be paved, i.e., adjusting the right parameters to separate complex waste streams.

The investigation of mechanisms and understanding of fundaments is a big part of the activities. In this lecture, I will present the main concepts guiding my research, especially related to crystallization; and how coupling experimental work with thermodynamic (speciation) simulations, allows us to delve into the intricate dynamics of the multicomponent systems, such as the waste streams. Furthermore, I will show how this philosophy can be applied to pioneering sustainable solutions for the recovery of critical materials from urban mining, like end-of-life batteries, and mining waste, and foreseeing future components in waste electric and electronic equipment, like niobium.