The Opportunity for Utilizing End‐of‐Life Scrap to Meet Growing Copper Demand
Name
J Adv Manuf Process - 2025 - Diersen - The Opportunity for Utilizing End‐of‐Life Scrap to Meet Growing Copper Demand.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
702.5 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
003e9e8e031e0ba55f3b680f61e49171
Author(s)
Diersen, Isabel
Bhuwalka, Karan
Olivetti, Elsa
Date Issued
July 11, 2025
Journal
Journal of Advanced Manufacturing and Processing
Publisher
Wiley
Citation
I. Diersen, K. Bhuwalka, and E. Olivetti, “ The Opportunity for Utilizing End-of-Life Scrap to Meet Growing Copper Demand,” Journal of Advanced Manufacturing and Processing 7, no. 3 (2025): e70031.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
As electrification trends and clean energy deployment drive up copper demand, there will be pressure on copper supply chains.With annual copper demand expected to grow by 50% and reach 49 Mt by 2035, the world will continue to need additional sourcesof copper supply. While expanding mining projects could increase copper production, given the significant stock of material,secondary copper can play a vital role in meeting demand. We analyze the opportunity to meet growing copper demand via in-creased scrap collection and improved technical recycling efficiencies. We use an economic model of the global copper system—with China analyzed separately from the rest of the world—to quantify supply evolution by incorporating price feedback betweendemand and supply. The model quantifies the impact of the increased collection on the displacement of mining production anddemonstrates how increasing recycling can modulate supply risks and copper prices. Aligned with recent literature on futurecopper flows, we find that there is an opportunity to increase scrap supply in 2040 by 46% (6.3 Mt) compared with the baseline.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1002/amp2.70031
