Tag: urban mining

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Circular Zinc Flows

While some were indulging in an extended spring cleaning (this year labeled ‘quarantine cleaning’) I decided to take on some of the hard disks sitting on my desk.

These circular zinc flow diagrams from 2011 survived the cleaning and are getting a new life here on the blog. They are more or less two versions of the same diagram, apparently with a Sankey diagram in mind.

radial_zinc_1

The first is a top view and shows zinc flows in the economy (U.S. or world? … sorry, but I don’t have the accompanying text any more). Flows are in millions of tonnes (Mt) in 1996. The second one has the same numbers, but adds a 3D perspective…

radial_zinc_2

Some tricky issues here: The ‘zinc in products’ stream of 8.1 Mt narrows down to zero, as the zinc sits in products, from where it later might be released into the cycle again. This does not help the attempt to draw them in a circle (to associate circularity of zinc flows). As a consequence the streams are not to scale (compare, for example the 0,8 Mt scrap feed flow right next to the 6,6 Mt flow for zinc from mines). The 3D perspective and the shadow effect don’t help in any way here…

Check out some more Sankey diagrams with the tag ‘circular’ and this post on radial Sankey diagrams.

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Precious Metals and Critical Raw Materials

The EU funded PROSUM research project looks at ‘Prospecting Secondary raw materials in the Urban mine and Mining wastes’. The more than 15 institutions participating in the project have recently published their findings in a final report.

The report has some interesting Sankey diagrams on market input, stocks, waste generation and waste flows for product groups such as vehicles, batteries, precious materials and selected critical raw materials (CRMs) contained in batteries, electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) and vehicles.

Here is the diagram for vehicles in the EU28+2 (=EU28 plus Switzerland and Norway) market. Data relates to the year 2015.

prosum_2015_vehicles

Flows are in tons and ktons, blending two scales in one diagram. This merits its own post, I think. (read it here)

The electric vehicles currently driving on the roads are shown as “Stock”, meaning that the materials are in use and that they could eventually be recovered at the end of the life of the vehicle. This is the large stackd bar between “POM” (placed on market) and “De-reg Vehicles”. Again this stacked bar uses two different scales (tons and ktons).

Official report citation: Jaco Huisman, Pascal Leroy, François Tertre, Maria Ljunggren Söderman, Perrine Chancerel, Daniel Cassard, Amund N. Løvik, Patrick Wäger, Duncan Kushnir, Vera Susanne Rotter, Paul Mählitz, Lucía Herreras, Johanna Emmerich, Anders Hallberg, Hina Habib, Michelle Wagner, Sarah Downes. Prospecting Secondary Raw Materials in the Urban Mine and mining wastes (ProSUM) – Final Report, ISBN: 978-92-808-9060-0 (print), 978-92-808-9061-7 (electronic), December 21, 2017, Brussels, Belgium