Integration of energy transition and circularity in copper production: A techno-economic and environmental study

Over the years, energy transition (fossil to renewable) and sustainable economy (from linear to circular) are being regarded as the key approaches to comply and implement the regional and international environmental protocols. Meanwhile, copper demand has been increasing in the past decade and will continuously expand in future. Hence, the objective of this work was to systematically investigate the energy transition-circular economy approach in copper production through optimizing technological, economic, regulatory and societal variables. In particular, the potential of Power-to-X technology in the existing copper production chain was investigated, with a particular focus on copper recycling. The HSC Chemistry software was used to model and simulate copper production processes using secondary raw materials (e.g. waste printed circuit boards and copper-containing waste cable). A simulation-based techno-economic and environmental impact assessment was performed to evaluate the integration of the renewable energies into the secondary copper production. The results showed that enhanced sustainability can be achieved through adopting this integration. Finally, challenges associated from flexibility (e.g., fossil to renewable energy) in copper production have been identified and further discussed.