Toward Sustainable Rare Earth Element Production: Key Challenges in Techno-Economic, Life Cycle, and Social Impact Assessment
Rare earth elements (REEs) are 17 critical minerals used in many clean energy technologies like wind turbines and electric vehicles. Conventionally, we produce REEs from mining in a few, geopolitically restricted regions. Developing systems that utilize new technologies and unconventional feedstocks provides an opportunity to meet increasing demand while improving sustainability. Techno-economic analysis (TEA), life cycle assessment (LCA), and social LCA (sLCA) are commonly used tools to assess
OpenAlex
177d ago
Environment