Alicia Valero

• PhD
• Head of Department at CIRCE Institute - Universidad de Zaragoza

Hydrogen production via water electrolysis and renewable electricity is expected to play a pivotal role as an energy carrier in the energy transition. This fuel emerges as the most environmentally sustainable energy vector for non-electric applications and is devoid of CO2 emissions. However, an electrolyzer’s infrastructure relies on scarce and en...

The momentum of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is driving increased demand for certain specific metals. These include copper, silver, gold, and platinum group metals (PGMs), which have important applications in renewable energies, green hydrogen, and electronic products. However, the continuous extraction of these metals is leading to a rapid dec...

Copper is one of the key metals for the digital and energy transition, which will increase demand in the coming years. On the other hand, primary extraction poses increasing environmental problems due to the progressive decline in the mineral concentration of deposits (ore grade). In this context, electronic waste is becoming a very promising sourc...

A conventional vehicle requires more than 50 different metals in its manufacturing, most of which are critical. Given this circumstance, enhancing sustainability from a raw materials perspective requires improvements in the disassemblability of car parts. This enhancement aims to yield metal-rich fractions, enabling the application of effective rec...

Light-duty vehicles are increasingly incorporating plastic materials to reduce production costs and achieve lightweight designs. On average, a conventional car utilizes over 200 kg of plastic, comprising more than 23 different types, which often present challenges for recycling due to their incompatibility. Consequently, the focus on plastic recycl...

The path toward energy transition requires many metals, some of which are scarce in nature or their supply is controlled by a few countries. The European and Spanish situations are particularly vulnerable because of the scarcity of crucial geological mineral resources, especially those known as critical. In this context, the recovery of metals from...

Using a thermodynamic approach, this paper identifies the most critical parts of a car, considering their composition. A total of 11 car parts that contain valuable and scarce materials have been selected using thermodynamic rarity, an indicator that helps assess elements and minerals in exergy terms according to their relative scarcity in the crus...

This study develops a methodology to assess the energy transition’s territorial, ecological and material impacts on regions. As a case study, the methodology is applied to the Cantabrian-Mediterranean Bioregion, a geographical area constituting eight autonomous communities located in the north of Spain. Two energy demand scenarios for 2030 and 2050...

The measurement of NOx emissions in vehicles has so far been exclusively carried out during the type-approval process. For this purpose, high-precision gas measurement laboratory equipment and Portable Emission Measurement Systems (PEMS) are used. Both types of equipment are costly in terms of price, maintenance, complexity, and time of use (calibr...

The measurement of NOx emissions in vehicles has so far been exclusively carried out during the type-approval process. For this purpose, high-precision gas measurement laboratory equipment and Portable Emission Measurement Systems (PEMS) are used. Both types of equipment are costly in terms of price, maintenance, complexity, and time of use (calibr...

Niobium and tantalum are mainly produced from columbite–tantalite ores, and 60% of their production is nowadays located in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. The concentration of supply, the scarcity, the wide range of use in all electronic devices, and the expected future demand boosted by the clean and digital transition means that Nb a...

Soil degradation, affecting around 38% of the world's cropland, threatens the global food supply. Due to the soil's complexity, the measure of soil degradation that involves the loss of soil fertility due to crop system management processes represents an unsolved problem. Exergy is a property with the potential to be used in soil fertility and/or d...

Rising prices in energy, raw materials, and shortages of critical raw materials (CRMs) for renewable energies or electric vehicles are jeopardizing the transition to a low-carbon economy. Therefore, managing scarce resources must be a priority for governments. To that end, appropriate indicators that can identify the criticality of raw materials an...

NOx emissions in vehicles are currently only controlled through the homologation process. There is a lack of knowledge to assess and control real NOx emissions of vehicles reliably. Even if vehicles in EU-27 are subject to Periodical Technical Inspection (PTI), NOx are not among the pollutants currently being controlled. For PTIs, tests need to be...

NOx emissions in vehicles are currently only controlled through the homologation pro‐ cess. There is a lack of knowledge to assess and control real NOx emissions of vehicles reliably. Even if vehicles in EU‐27 are subject to Periodical Technical Inspection (PTI), NOx are not among the pollutants currently being controlled. For PTIs, tests need to b...

With the rush of metal consumption in the last decades and the expected raw material demand driven by the clean and digital transition, a growing concern has emerged about the decline of ore grades. Research of the effect of ore grade decline on energy consumption during the processing of metals has conventionally been addressed using historical da...

A global energy consumption reduction is essential to address the many dimensions of the current ecological crisis. In this paper we have compiled the reasons that justify the necessity to start this energy descent process in the countries of the global North, where the annual per capita final energy consumption was 118 GJ in 2017. Based on recent...

Demand for niobium and tantalum is increasing exponentially as these are essential ingredients for the manufacture of, among others, capacitors in technological devices and ferroniobium. Mine tailings rich in such elements could constitute an important source of Nb and Ta in the future and alleviate potential supply risks. This paper evaluates the...

Demand for niobium and tantalum is increasing exponentially as these are essential ingredients for the manufacture of, among others, capacitors in technological devices and ferroniobium. Mine tailings rich in such elements could constitute an important source of Nb and Ta in the future and so alleviate potential supply risks. This paper evaluates t...

Este artículo hace una revisión crítica del informe de la AIE titulado El rol de los minerales críticos en la transición hacia energías limpias. El objetivo principal de este informe es identificar los minerales y metales clave que podrían generar problemas de suministro y cuellos de botella en una transición energética limpia. La AIE establece una...

There are alternatives to compensate for the exponential increase in raw material consumption. Substitution is the most straightforward one, replacing an element with another that is less critical or more abundant. This situation will be explored for electric vehicles, different renewable energies, printed circuit boards and lighting, as each techn...

Currently, different scenarios are being created to analyse how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and so limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. To reach this goal, we must reduce consumption and change the foundations of our energy system, and the most effective way seems to increase the use of renewable energy so...

Humankind has relied on the extraction of different raw materials for centuries, starting with iron, copper or gold to a large number of metals and fossil fuels currently used in multiple sectors, thanks to technological development. Still, this change has also led to other issues, such as increasing CO2 at a global level and climate change. One wa...

For millions of years, nature has formed and concentrated minerals in the deposits we know today. Such deposits represent the natural stock or cradle from a life cycle assessment point of view. The conventional cradle-to-grave analysis can be combined with grave-to-cradle analysis using Thanatia, a resource-exhausted planet, as a starting point. Us...

Fossil fuel and mineral demand have considerably increased in the last few decades, even reaching an exponential trend. Oil and natural gas consumption accounts for more than half of the total demand in recent years, the Middle East and Saudi Arabia being the main producing regions. Regarding unconventional fossil fuels, the United States is the co...

In this chapter, we will analyse the global historical extraction of mineral resources from an exergy point of view. Exergy allows us to assess the degradation caused by the extraction of minerals by humans considering the resource quality. The loss of total mineral wealth from 1900 to 2018 was around 200 Gtoe. This means that we would need a minim...

It is broadly true that matter here on Earth, like energy everywhere, is conserved but degrades. If the energy of a system degrades until it reaches equilibrium with its environment, so also does the Earth’s stock of economically valuable non-renewable materials of various kinds. However, there is a big difference, inasmuch as the Sun renews the en...

Fossil fuels and minerals are non-renewable resources. What’s available on Earth to extract is finite and is determined by several factors such as technology, global resources and economic value. This section will first introduce the different terms used in the mining industry related to raw materials and how they are formed. Then, we will proceed...

The hidden costs of technologies, considering the physical quality of the elements of which they are composed, will be analysed through a thermodynamic approach. First, the thermodynamic rarity of electrical and electronic devices is calculated and compared with the wastes this sector generates. Additionally, this same analysis is carried out with...

To keep the increase in global average temperature below 2 °C the use of renewable energy sources is essential. There are various scenarios for this energy transition depending on the amounts and types of renewable energies implemented. However, the material requirements to build new renewable power systems is rarely considered. It is key to unders...

Thanatia es ciencia. Es la descripción de este planeta si seguimos esquilmando su geodiversidad. El cambio climático y la digitalización conducen a la movilidad eléctrica, las energías renovables con sus baterías, la robotización, el internet de las cosas... Hay más teléfonos móviles que habitantes en el mundo, con una vida media de dos años. Ya se...

NOx emissions in vehicles are currently only controlled through the homologation process. There is a lack of knowledge to reliably assess and control real NOx emissions of vehicles, because although vehicles in EU-27 are subject to PTI (Periodic Technical Inspection), NOx are not among the pollutants currently being controlled. In this paper, a new...

In the last century, the economic growth has been accompanied by a worldwide diffusion of polymers for multiple applications. However, there is a growing attention to the environmental pollution and energy consumption linked to the unconditional use of plastic. In the present work, exergy is used as a measure of the resource consumption during the...

The use of electric and electronic equipment has been increasing dramatically in the last years and entails an important amount of waste containing many valuable metals which could constitute an important source of raw materials if appropriately recycled. In this paper, an expression has been developed to value waste of electric and electronic equi...

Earth has become a huge mine, with a greater quantity and variety of fundamental mineral resources being extracted year after year. Technology, from electric cars to everyday electrical equipment, consume vast amounts of scarce raw materials. On a planet with limited resources, are these minerals being properly assessed? Will there be enough raw ma...

This paper uses an exergy approach first to identify the most critical components in a car, understood as those car parts that contain valuable and scarce materials. The approach is based on the thermodynamic rarity methodology, which assesses minerals in exergy terms according to their relative scarcity in the crust and the energy required to extr...

In the last century, the economic growth and the petrochemical industry rise have been accompanied by a worldwide diffusion of polymers for a large variety of applications. However, only recent years have seen a growing attention on the consequences, in terms of environmental pollution and energy consumption, of the unconditional use of plastic. In...

A conventional passenger car demands almost 50 different types of metals, along other raw materials. Some ofthese metals, such as tantalum, indium, niobium or rare earths elements, are considered critical by the EuropeanCommission and many other institutions. Additionally, their functional recycling is practically absent. Thetransition to fully ele...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-020-01736-6 free view only version: https://rdcu.be/b1dDH Purpose The safeguard subject of the Area of Protection “natural Resources,” particularly regarding mineral resources, has long been debated. Consequently, a variety of life cycle impact assessment methods based on different concepts are ava...

PurposeAssessing impacts of abiotic resource use has been a topic of persistent debate among life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method developers and a source of confusion for life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners considering the different interpretations of the safeguard subject for mineral resources and the resulting variety of LCIA methods...

The transition to full electromobility must be carefully evaluated, as large amounts of strategic metals will be required, for which there is presently little to no recovery or recycling (e.g. gold, silver, tantalum or cobalt). In this study, we perform a comprehensive metal assessment of two passenger cars (conventional and battery electric models...

This paper presents a thermodynamic vision of the depletion of mineral resources. It demonstrates how raw materials can be better assessed using exergy, based on thermodynamic rarity, which considers scarcity in the crust and energy requirements for extracting and refining minerals. An exergy analysis of the energy transition reveals that, to appro...

The depletion of the mineral capital is a topic of concern because the worldwide demand for minerals is rapidly increasing. Moreover, since the energy consumption increases as ore grades decline, there is growing stress on energy resources and the environment associated with mining activities. The energy costs associated with the exhaustion of mine...

De qué está hecho un panel fotovoltaico? ¿Y un aerogenerador? ¿Qué materiales contienen las baterías que permitirán electrificar los vehículos? ¿De dónde provienen estas materias primas? ¿Hay suficientes materiales en la corteza terrestre para abastecer el crecimiento necesario de las renovables y frenar así el cambio climático? ¿Qué porcentaje de...

A way to assess today’s mineral patrimony is to evaluate how much mining energy is saved today because of having concentrated mines instead of finding the minerals dispersed throughout the crust. This can be assessed through the so-called exergy replacement costs (ERC), which are a measure of the exergy required to extract and concentrate minerals...

Desde tiempos de la colonia, América Latina ha sido una región que tradicionalmente ha suministrado materias primas que han servido para el desarrollo económico y productivo de otras regiones del mundo. Minerales de América Latina, como hierro, alumi-nio, oro, plata y cobre, entre otros, han llegado a ser "commodities" altamente valorados en un mun...

There is growing concern about the decline of the ore grade in mines and the increased energy usage for processing and refining metals. In the limit, where no concentrated deposits exist, minerals must be obtained from bare rock. A method for quantitatively assessing the ''free bonus'' granted by nature in providing concentrated minerals in mines a...

En la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático 2015 (COP21) se acordó que el incremento de la temperatura media global no debe superar los 2ºC respecto a la temperatura de niveles preindustriales. Una manera de alcanzar este objetivo implica la incorporación masiva de las llamadas tecnologías verdes, en especial en la generación...

The transition from a Linear to Circular Economy has become a societal challenge to be tackled. However, the increasing complexity of materials and products increases also the sophistication of the circular economy systems required to deal with them. These systems are very resource consuming, therefore, a rigorous evaluation of the impact of every...

The installation of new electrical power plants from renewable sources is key in the transition towards a low-carbon economy. An important amount of diverse raw materials is required for this development. Due to its current prominence among renewable energy sources, we assess the expected development of wind energy towards the availability of the r...

A conventional passenger vehicle demands more than 50 different types of metals, some of them such as tantalum, indium, niobium or rare earths elements (REE), are considered critical by the European Commission. Besides this, their functional recycling is practically absent. Moreover, the transition to fully electric vehicles will require more elect...

NOx emissions in vehicles are currently only controlled through the homologation process. Vehicles in EU-28 are also subject to PTI (Periodic Technical Inspection), yet NOx is not among the pollutants currently being controlled. This is why there is currently a lack of tools to reliably assess and control real NOx emissions of vehicles. In order to...

In 2008 European Commission launched the Covenant of Mayors (CoM) program with the aim to encourage that local governments worked to reduce at least a 20 % their greenhouse gases emissions before 2020. To renew their commitments to further horizons, Covenant of Mayors program proposed that signatories should reduce at least a 40 % their greenhouse...

A conventional passenger vehicle demands more than 50 different types of metals, some of them such as tantalum, indium, niobium or rare earths elements (REE), are considered critical by the European Commission. Besides this, their functional recycling is practically absent. Moreover, the transition to fully electric vehicles will require more elect...

Current End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) recycling processes are mainly based on mechanical separation techniques. These methods are designed to recycle those metals with the highest contribution in the vehicle weight such as steel, aluminum, and copper. However, a conventional vehicle uses around 50 different types of metals, some of them considered crit...

Abstract Current metal recycling techniques for end-of-life vehicles (ELV) are based on mechanical treatments to mainly recover steel, aluminum, copper, and zinc alloys. Such techniques facilitate compliance with the ELV European Directive (2000/53/EC) target of achieving recyclability quotes of up to 85%. However, a vehicle can use more than 60 me...

Current End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) recycling processes are mainly based on mechanical separation techniques. These methods are designed to recycle those metals with the highest contribution in the vehicle weight such as steel, aluminum, and copper. However, a conventional vehicle uses around 50 different types of metals, some of them considered crit...

Material flow analysis is a key tool to quantify and monitor natural resource use. A very visual way to undertake such analyses representing the mineral trade of a certain nation or continent is through the well-known Sankey diagrams, in which the mineral resources that are extracted, imported, exported, recycled and consumed within the given bound...

Modern living is heavily dependenton mining activities. Having a secure and stable supply of mineral resources has proven to be a key for societies, especially during periods of war. A total of 39 raw materials are identified as ‘strategic’ for the current European defense industry and 16 are additionally considered critical due to economic reasons...

This paper shows the common developments performed by the Institute of Thermal Technology and the Research Centre for Energy Resources and Consumption regarding the assessment of natural resource degradation. Particularly, it shows the last model of the Szargut's Reference Environment, which was updated with new geological and geochemical informati...

Moving towards a low-carbon economy will imply a considerable increase in the deployment of green technologies, which will in turn increase the demand of certain raw materials. In this paper, the material requirements for 2050 scenarios are assessed in terms of exergy to analyze the impact in natural resources in each scenario and identify which te...

Latin America has always been a region of great interest not only for its rich-multicultural heritage, and diverse flora and fauna, but also for its natural resources that have become valuable commodities worldwide. In this paper an exergy-based analysis is used to investigate the cost of mineral depletion. By applying exergy replacement costs (ERC...

Decarbonizing world economies implies the deployment of “green technologies”, meaning a renovation of the energy sector towards using renewable sources and zero emission transport technologies. This renovation will require huge amounts of raw materials, some of them with high supply risks. To assess such risks a new methodology is proposed, identif...

•From 1995 to2013 inLA 20, iron production represented 72% of the total production intones,while in Mtoe it only represented 13%, and the contrary was observed fora luminum.Thus, the loss of natural stockofLA-20 was mainly causedb yaluminum and not by iron. •Economic revenues of the sales of minerals (GDPextractive/GDPtotal) was far from equal when...

Latin America has traditionally been a raw material supplier since colonial times. In this paper, we analyze mineral exports from an exergoecology perspective from twenty countries in Latin American (LA-20). We apply material flow analysis (MFA) principles along with the concept of the exergy replacement cost (ERC), which considers both quantity an...

The changing material composition of cars represents a challenge for future recycling of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). Particularly, as current recycling targets are based solely on mass, critical metals increasingly used in cars might be lost during recycling processes, due to their small mass compared to bulk metals such as Fe and Al. We investiga...

Among the existing methodologies to assess future availability of mineral resources, the Hubbert peak model is a direct approach that can provide useful information about non-fuel mineral depletion using BAU production trends. Using lithium as a case study, the influence on the fluctuations on extractable resources has been analyzed. Accounting onl...

Urban mobility is highly dependent on private vehicles causing pollution, traffic congestion and traffic accidents. The tram has become one of the most relevant public transport modes in those cities which need to reduce the private vehicle dependency. However, the implementation of this kind of infrastructure must be done carefully to avoid unsucc...

This paper makes a review of current raw material criticality assessment methodologies and proposes a new approach based on the second law of thermodynamics. This is because conventional methods mostly focus on supply risk and economic importance leaving behind relevant factors, such as the physical quality of substances. The new approach is propos...

This poster tries to answer the following questions: Is the energy transition going to be really renewable? Will there be a net exergy reduction of non-renewable resources consumption?What is the weight of mineral resources in this transition? What are the most demanded metals to build GreenTechnologies?

Latin America has been a region of great interest not only for its rich-multicultural heritage and diverse flora and fauna, but also for its natural resources that have become valuable commodities worldwide. In fact, Latin American countries have valuable reserves of copper, silver, tin, bauxite, nickel and other non-fuel minerals that are needed i...