Analysis of long-term statistical data of cobalt flows in the EU.

Long-term statistical data was explored, acquired, processed, and analysed in order to assess the historical domestic production and international trade of a number of cobalt-containing commodities in the EU. Different data sources were examined for data, such as the British Geological Survey (BGS), the US Geological Survey (USGS), and the Eurostat and UN Comtrade (UNC) databases, considering all EU-member states before and after they joined the EU. For the international trade, hidden flows related to data gaps such as data reported in monetary value or recorded as "special category" were identified and included in the analysis. In addition, data from the Finnish customs database (ULJAS) was used to complement flows reported by Eurostat and UNC. From UNC, data was obtained considering the member states as reporters or as partners of the trade, due to internal differences of the database. Based on the acquired data the domestic production and international trade of the commodities were reconstructed for the timeframes 1938-2018 and 1988-2018, respectively. Next to the analysis of the trend of the production and trade of the different commodities, the importance of including hidden flows was revealed, where hidden flows represented more than 50% of the flow of a year in some cases. In addition, it was identified that even from reliable data sources, strong differences (more than 100% in some cases) can be found in the reported data, which is crucial to consider when utilizing the data in research.

Cobalt in end-of-life products in the EU, where does it end up? - The MaTrace approach.

The use of cobalt has experienced a strong growth in the last decades. Due to its high economic importance and high supply risk, it has been classified as a critical raw material for the EU and other economies. Part of the EU's strategy is intended to secure its availability, through fostering its efficient use and recycling. The latter is affected by factors such as the amount of available end-of-life products, and their collection-to-recycling rate. A novel methodology to analyze the impact of these factors on the cobalt flows in society is the model MaTrace, which can track the fate of materials over time and across products. The MaTrace model was expanded, adapted, and applied to predict the fate of cobalt embedded in finished products in use in the EU, considering the underlying life cycle phases within the technosphere. Eleven scenarios were built, assessing different options in the implementation of relevant EU's policies. The flows were projected for a period of 25 years, starting in 2015. The results of the baseline scenario show that after 25 years, around 8% of the initial stock of cobalt stays in use, 3% is being hoarded by users, 28% has been exported, and 61% has been lost. The main contributors to the losses of the system are the non-selective collection of end-of-life products, and the export of end-of-life products, recycled cobalt and final products. The results of the scenarios show that higher collection-to-recycling rates and lower export could increase up to 50% the cobalt that stays in use.

Data quality assessment framework for critical raw materials. The case of cobalt.

Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) require a deep understanding of their societal metabolism, for which robust data and information are needed. However, despite the efforts to build reliable data, some CRMs such as cobalt, are still characterised by lack of data harmonization, lack of connection between datasets, and significant data unavailability. Together with data gaps filling, data quality is a crucial aspect to improve Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Criticality Assessment (CA). Nevertheless, most of the methodologies for Data Quality Assessment (DQA) are not designed for these tools, but for others, e.g. life cycle assessment. The current research addresses the following challenges; a better understanding of the societal metabolism of CRMs; the development and implementation of DQA in MFA and CA; and a better understanding of the available data related to current cobalt flows in the EU technosphere. The underlying life cycle phases of CRMs within the technosphere were identified, together with 15 key parameters. A new DQA matrix was developed, which was subsequently applied to the full dataset collected for cobalt. The dataset was built considering seven high-end applications of cobalt. More than 300 values were gathered, which were analysed in function of different aspects, such as the country/region, and year. Through the data analysis and the application of the DQA framework, data gaps were identified due to low availability and/or low quality. It was concluded that the main deficiency of cobalt data is its reliability, due to lack of information regarding its generation method, and the incomplete stakeholder coverage.