Circular hydrometallurgy approaches towards more sustainable processing of critical minerals

Circular hydrometallurgy is an emerging approach in metal extraction and recovery that applies circular economy principles (reduce, reuse, recycle, and recover) to traditional hydrometallurgical processes. It is a sustainable, closed-loop approach to metal recovery that turns waste into a resource, integrating hydrometallurgical science with circular economy thinking.

Circular hydrometallurgy is becoming a cornerstone perspective for extractive metallurgical processes, and in particular for the processing of critical minerals, and their associated metals and materials. In a keynote lecture at Critical Minerals '26, Jacques Eksteen, a Professor in the WA School of Mines, at Curtin University, Australia, will review examples in the development of novel processes for some critical minerals essential in the Energy Transition, such as nickel, cobalt and copper, and associated precious metals such as PGMs, gold and silver. 

The Energy Transition towards cleaner forms of non-fossil energy requires a complete rethink as to how we design our processes from the perspectives of energy utilisation, the use of benign reagents, the recycling and reuse of reagents and water, and valorisation of traditional waste products. The circularity around waste products, water and reagents reuse will be emphasised, while still ensuring economic feasibility.

Prof. Eksteen will provide examples where amino acids have been used in hydrometallurgical pathways to extract and refine a variety of critical metals from their ores, tailings, concentrates and from various technospheric (i.e. human-derived) waste materials. This will be an interesting precurser to the keynote lecture from Prof. Chun-Xia Zhao. who will show how her team at the University of Adelaide are developing designer peptides, short chains of amino acids, tailored for specific mineral binding and flotation applications.

Jacques Eksteen is the Manager of the Critical Minerals Metals and Materials for the Energy Transition research group at Curtin University. He is also the Interim Research Director for the Critical Metals for Critical Industries CRC. In addition, he was the Program Lead for Technology Readiness Level Progression in the Critical Minerals and Resources Technology Trailblazer, and held the roles Chief Scientist, Chief Operating Officer, and Research Director  of the Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre Ltd. He was Director of the Gold Technology Group and project manager of the AMIRA 420 project from 2012 to 2019. Jacques holds a PhD in Extractive Metallurgical Engineering and has 32 years of experience in industry and academia. He has published over 200 journal papers and conference proceedings and is a listed inventor on 10 patent families.

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