Eu's Goal of Increasing Self-Sufficiency in Mining Operations
All lithium chemicals used in electric car batteries and mobile phones are mined and processed outside Europe.
Photo: VTT
At the beginning of 2023, the European Commission took a significant step towards self-sufficiency by publishing the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA). The regulation defines clear goals for developing the value chain of strategic raw materials and focuses, among other things, on lithium processing.
At the beginning of this year, the EU-funded international LITHOS project, for which finnish VTT has the leading responsibility, started to develop more efficient lithium recovery. The project involves close development cooperation with projects in France and Portugal, for example. The project aims to enable existing processes to utilise larger shares of lithium resources and brings innovations to processing lithium mineral impurities.
The goal is to develop a concept that allows for 90 percent lower water consumption and a significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions compared to current operations in Asia, thus making the processes that apply LITHOS significantly more environmentally friendly than current methods.
The long-term goal is to support Europe’s ambitions to improve its self-sufficiency of lithium supply by increasing the recovery rate of mining and refining operations.
