Additive Manufacturing for Critical Minerals

This book highlights the challenges to their efficient and sustainable production which impact climate, habitats, human living, future minerals availability, biodiversity and working conditions. This article evaluates the role of additive manufacturing in the sustainable production of critical minerals. An essential physical technology of the fourth industrial revolution, additive manufacturing is a transformative technology capable of enabling the complete redesign and rejuvenation of critical mineral industries towards a cleaner, more affordable, and resource-abundant future. In the mining of critical minerals, additive manufacturing enables automated exploration and mapping of critical mineral reserves using innovative robot and drone designs. It also enables process-wide automation and optimization in mining operations, facilitates better understanding of geology and rock mechanics, and opens new avenues for the research and development of independent remote mining bases. In the mineralogical and metallurgical processing of critical minerals, additive manufacturing enables the manufacture of high-performance, lightweight, wear-resistant, corrosion-resistant, low-cost, and recyclable tools and equipment and capabilities for their on-site repair, remanufacture and customization. Additive manufacturing enables the development of new mineralogical and metallurgical processes through rapid prototyping and presents new opportunities for metal recycling and their re-extraction from waste streams. Thus, additive manufacturing can make critical mineral production more efficient and sustainable by improvement in overall process efficiencies, reduction in energy, and water consumption, minimization, or remediation of waste streams, and reduction in operational and maintenance costs, and greenhouse gas emissions.