SUSTAINABILITY
Less chemicals.
More resilience. Less waste.
From brown to green transition
Mining and refining contribute to global emissions. But there would be no wind, solar, batteries or EVs without critical metals. These metals power the transition, and global demand is only rising.
The challenge in numbers
Each year, refiners process roughly €500 billion worth of critical and precious metals worldwide. Even with state-of-the-art recovery technologies, an estimated 5–15% remains unrecovered. That translates into tens of billions of euros lost annually — and strategic materials permanently wasted in residues, side streams, and process solutions.
At the same time, demand is accelerating fast.
Clean-energy technologies alone are expected to increase critical raw material needs by 4–6× by 2050 (IEA), driven by electrification, batteries, hydrogen, and advanced manufacturing.
Yet supply cannot respond quickly.
New mines take 10–20 years to develop, ore grades are steadily declining, and regulatory constraints are tightening across jurisdictions. Supply is also highly concentrated in a small number of countries, amplifying geopolitical risk and price volatility. Recognizing this, the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act (2024) makes security of supply a strategic priority.
But increasing primary supply alone won’t close the gap.
Recovering more value from existing process streams is no longer optional — it’s essential.
What must change
Meeting demand now requires more than output. It requires smarter recovery. Today’s tools were built for volume, not precision. They are built on heavy chemistry, inflexible flowsheets, and process steps that struggle with mixed or dilute streams. Progress needs technology that can target metals selectively, adapt in real time, and prove its impact with data.
If the future is electric, metal recovery should be too.
Elmery adds a pulse-based selective electrochemistry step to existing lines.
The aim is simple: recover more metal with fewer additions and fewer steps, and keep performance stable when feeds vary.
- Low-chemical by design — Fewer additions, safer handling.
- Selective by control — Pulse parameters favor target metals, not co-deposition.
- Predictable in practice — Defined operating windows; stability measured in weeks, not hours.
- Built to adopt — Drop-in module; start small and scale by adding modules.
How we aim to do less
Sustainability must be proven, so we make sure to measure everything.
- Less chemicals — reduced consumption and safer handling.
- Less waste load — less recirculation and downstream treatment.
- Less energy per gram recovered— optimized, tracked, and improved through tuning.
- Less variance over time — operating windows that hold for weeks.
Detailed data, methodologies, and anonymized pilot results are shared in technical briefs and case studies.
Let’s talk.
No chemicals. Fewer steps.
More metals from any concentration.
Engineered to make complex recovery simple.