Publications
Scientific publications
The research behind our processes. Some documents can be downloaded after leaving an e-mail address.
Founding article setting out the urban mining concept, first published in 2004 and taken up here. It starts from an observation made during a study carried out for the European Commission under the 5th Framework Programme (1999-2002): the lithium content of spent batteries exceeds the concentration found in ore extracted from natural mines. The article draws the consequences for where metals sit among a country’s critical resources, and for recycling policy.
Primary recycling technology developed at the University of Grenoble and protected by patent FR 9845467. The process has been commercialised in seven countries: France, Spain, the United States, Italy, England, Singapore and China. It forms the technical foundation on which later work was built — on steelworks dust, on incineration bottom ash and, more recently, on lithium batteries from electric vehicles.