Building Circular Economy for Critical Materials: from Mining, Reduced Usage, and Recycling to ReplacementBuilding Circular Economy for Critical Materials: from Mining, Reduced Usage, and Recycling to Replacement

Abstract:

Critical minerals such as Lithium, Iridium, Cobalt and Nickel, are strategic resources essential for modern technological and industrial development. However, the production and processing are concentrated among a few countries, exposing global supply chains to significant geopolitical risk. Therefore, it is important to invest on the mining, recovery, and recycling of critical materials from different sources and formulate strategies to replace them using earth abundant elements. In this talk, I will go over efforts in my group for developing a new platform technology to extract critical materials from more accessible resources such as brines and seawater, reducing their usage in energy storage and conversion devices (e.g., water electrolyzers) while maintaining and even improving device performance, designing effective processes for critical materials recycling, and eventually finding replacement elements with the same functionality at lower cost. Our goal is to build a circular economy for critical materials to link production, manufacturing, application and reuse, creating positive impacts in global economy, societal sustainability, and national security. 

Biography:

Dr. Zhenxing Feng is a Professor in the School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering at Oregon State University. Dr. Feng obtained a BS at Peking University, China and MS at McGill University, Canada. After completing his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University, USA, Dr. Feng worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) of Argonne National Laboratory. In 2016, Dr. Feng moved to Oregon State University to start his independent career.  Dr. Feng received the Office of Navy Research (ONR) Summer Fellowship, Scialog Advanced Energy Storage Award, and was named as the highly cited researcher by Clarivate in 2022 and 2024. Dr. Feng is interested in finding design principles of various materials for energy harvesting, conversion, and storage applications.