6th EU-US- Japan Trilateral Conference on Critical Materials

More than 100 participants attended the 6th EU-US- Japan Trilateral Conference on Critical Materials.

The theme of the 2016 Conference was "Strategies for Sustainable Supply of Critical Raw Materials". It was a good opportunity for researchers to network and for the relevant organisations (METI, NEDO, DOE and EC) to reconfirm the importance and relevance of such dialogue both at policy and at technical level. It was therefore agreed to continue the series of Trilateral Conferences on Critical Materials.

Session 1: "Criticality and risks analysis": material flows and stocks analysis; methodology for assessing critical materials; raw materials data and information for policy making.

• Presentation of Mr Devin Imholte: "Supply chain and risk analysis of critical materials R&D".
• Presentation of Dr Mitsutaka Matsumoto: "Criticality assessment and R&D for circulation of critical materials".
• Presentation of Pr. Gian Andrea Blengini: "Changing policy needs for criticality assessment in the EU and the contribution of the Raw Materials Scoreboard".

Session 2: "Novel materials by design": substitution, materials research and modelling, fundamental understanding of the development of new material solutions with a reduced or completely eliminated critical raw materials content, while maintaining or enhancing the performance of the materials, components and products.

• Prof. Kazuyuki Kuroda: "The promotion of strategic basic research on “element strategy” in Japan towards sustainable society".
• Presentation of Prof. Fotis Katsaros: "Development of novel, high-performance hybrid TWV/GPF automotive after treatment systems by rational design: substitution of PGMs and rare earth materials".
• Presentation of Dr Greg Mulholland: "Materials Informatics: artificial intelligence driven materials development and optimisation".

Session 3: "Circular economy" with a particular emphasis on CRMs recovery from different waste streams (urban mining, mining waste, industrial waste etc….), reuse and recycling, quality standards for secondary raw materials.

• Presentation of Mr Pascal Leroy: “Prospecting secondary raw materials in the urban mine and mining wastes”.
• Dr Ikenna Nlebedim: "Recovering the embodied energy in waste permanent magnets through recycling".
• Presentation of Prof. Takashi Nakamura: "Novel recycling processing for e-scrap containing critical metals".

Session 4: "Capacity building to secure sustainable supply of CRMs": infrastructure, knowledge and skills, competency networks, industry-academia collaboration.

• Presentation of Mr Colin Nexhip: "New approaches to recovering critical minerals and recycling e-waste in the copper smelting process: Limiting waste, increasing efficiency and creating value".
• Presentation of Prof. Shinji Hirai: "Research centre for environmentally friendly materials engineering and studies for progressive use of rare earths".
• Presentation of Dr Stéphane Bourg: "Initiatives for improving the sustainable supply of critical materials".

See the full agenda.