John Bowles, Nigel Cook and Hannah Hughes (contact: john.bowles@manchester.ac.uk)

Advanced technologies and the accelerating move away from carbon-based fuels following COP21 in 2015 have highlighted the need for secure supplies of the metals required. Typically these metals have a high value and are in short supply due to the rarity of their occurrence and bottlenecks in their extraction. Strategically it is preferable to avoid a monopoly by country, region or enterprise and the overall criticality is a combination of supply, demand, geographic concentration and perceived political risk. Although recycling of some of these elements is greater than 50%, for many recycling is below 1%. This session will examine the properties of minerals that may offer a resource of Ga, Te, Ge, In, Hf, the platinum-group and the rare-earth elements as well as Co, Ta, Nb, V, Sn and Cr.

The keynote speaker will be Jorge Relvas (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)