Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI
Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI

Raw Materials

Research for more secure and sustainable supply and use of raw materials

Mineral raw materials are a necessary basis for society. Although metals like copper and zinc, metalloids like gallium and indium, and industrial minerals like graphite and fluorite are – by mass – a small part of the larger raw materials world, they are essential in building all products that enable modern life.

Our Business Unit aims to contribute to a more sustainable use and re-use of raw materials. With our research at Fraunhofer ISI, we strive to understand society’s metabolism regarding mineral raw materials in a systemic and quantitative manner, assess security of supply, and evaluate potential future raw materials requirements in the face of technological change. Our results aim to support stakeholders from policymaking (e.g., parliaments, ministries, government agencies), industry (e.g., metal producer associations, manufacturing companies) and civil society (e.g., NGOs) with data, insights and options to make better decisions.

Main themes in our work on raw materials

Our research focuses on mineral raw materials. We are motivated by the need to better (qualitatively and quantitatively) understand and improve the way these resources are used (and re-used) by society.

Raw materials cycles

Raw materials are the foundation of our societies. Their pathway through the economy is described in the material lifecycle: mining, refining, intermediate goods production and end use manufacturing, the use-phase, generation, collection and processing of waste and finally recycling. Global cycles consider every ton of the material currently in anthropogenic use. Regional cycles show what is used inside that region and what enters or leaves the region in trade flows for every lifecycle stage. Understanding raw material cycles allows us to improve resource efficiency, Circular Economy and sustainability.

Security of raw material supply

A secure supply of raw materials is necessary for industrial production, for maintaining and improving living standards and for transitioning to a sustainable low-carbon economy. As our society increasingly relies on advanced technologies, renewable energy, and electric mobility, demand for the enabling raw materials has surged. The security and resilience of minerals supply chains rely on well-informed decision makers in policy and industry, as well as an engaged public. Identifying supply risks and critical raw materials enables awareness, mitigation and resilience. Our Business Unit works on assessing short- and long-term risks and trends in supply and demand of raw materials, and has been central to shaping the discussion on the assessment of critical raw materials since its (re-)emergence in the late 2000’s.

Technological change and raw materials

The widespread adoption of emerging technologies is a key factor shaping the raw material demand landscape because changes in technology translate directly into changes in raw material requirements. Everyday examples are the breakthrough of flat panel displays, which gave rise to a sharp surge in indium use around the turn of the millennium, and the current rush for battery materials like lithium and cobalt. We quantify the consequences of technological change for raw material use (which, how much, when) based on technical profiles of individual technologies. Expert interviews and workshops help collect and validate relevant data and insights. Material flow analysis allows for a differentiated analysis of products along their life cycles, and for the incorporation of quantitative future scenarios.

Tools for a systemic understanding of raw materials supply and use

Our toolkit integrates both qualitative and quantitative methods. We utilize a combination of these approaches to effectively address the complexities of the raw materials sector.

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  • Material flow analysis (MFA) originates from engineering sciences tracking material through industrial systems and processes. In the late 1960s, the principles for following flows and stocks of material in a chemical reactor were transferred to quantify physical flows and stocks of material in the anthropogenic metabolism. The building blocks of MFA are flows (transportation of material), processes (transformation of material) and stocks (storage of material). The main principle is conservation of mass in the studied system. Since the 1960s, MFA developed into one of the main, macro-level tools of Industrial Ecology.

    In material-centric MFA, one specific material is tracked through a defined system, e.g. the copper cycle within the European Union. Technology- or product-centric MFA quantifies flows and stocks of all or at least multiple connected materials, e.g. materials within the German energy system.

    Materials in trade flows are one important part of regional MFA. MFA studies can be done for one specific point in time – static MFA – or it can be conducted in regular time intervals as dynamic MFA. The latter has a much higher data demand. However, dynamic analysis of material flows and stocks allows to identify outliers or short-term effects as well as monitor developments over time. Dynamic MFA also provides the methodology to project historic developments into scenarios for the future.

    MFA is an important tool for assessing the sustainability of material use in our societies. The origin of demand and the sources of supply become visible. Therefore, MFA is often an underlying methodology of criticality assessments. Resource efficiency and material circularity can be investigated. The urban mine of material in use can be evaluated as source for current and future recycling. Recycling flows can be quantified, just like so far unused potentials for recycling, leading to the calculation of recycling rates for different purposes.

  • Security of raw material supply is an abstract concept. Supply disruptions tend to attract widespread attention when they occur - which they do rarely, fortunately.  On the downside, there is no solid empirical database for classic statistical analysis of present and future risks. Instead, the associated risks of damage and their consequences are approximated based on available indicators. In addition, risk perception varies greatly for different actors and scopes. Consequently, there are many different methodologies to assess security of raw material supply, or raw material criticality.

    Most criticality assessments, such as the EU study, define criticality as the systemic risk outlined by two dimensions: A supply risk dimension, describing the probability of a supply restriction, and an economic importance dimension, expressing the impact of a potential supply disruption (or in other words, the vulnerability of a system towards the supply disruption). Raw materials that are both subject to an elevated supply risk and a large economic importance are typically considered critical.

    Explicitly considering these principles and intricacies, we assess and apply existing criticality assessments, develop and apply custom criticality assessments for specific stakeholders and applications, and explore how raw material criticality links with other relevant fields such as the transition to a more circular economy, the green energy transition, electrified mobility, and industrial policy.

  • A well founded understanding of raw material cycles is the foundation of most of our studies. This general system analysis is based on historic and current quantitative analyses, such as dynamic material flow analysis, analysis of trade data or criticality assessments. In addition to these retrospective analyses, many questions arise regarding the future development of raw material cycles. Associated questions are:

    • How much of which raw materials do we need in the future?
    • How are technological developments affecting future raw material cycles?
    • How high is the future supply of secondary raw materials and the corresponding need for mining?

    We use quantitative scenarios to answer these questions. Different development trajectories are assessed and compared with each other to investigate impacts of external factors. While the actual future necessarily remains unknown, the comparison of different scenarios opens the spectrum of future raw material cycles. Many of these studies apply background scenarios for external factors such as population growth or economic situation. Furthermore, the quantitative scenarios comprise assessments of future technologies (e.g. energy transition, recycling technologies) and the quantification (e.g. change of efficiencies, demand, etc.) thereof.

  • Geology dictates where mineral raw materials are extracted, industrial sites are where they are transformed into products, and population centers where they are finally used and discarded, providing a potential source for recycling. This leads to international flows of raw materials, the products they are embedded in, and the scrap generated at the end of the useful lifetimes of these products.

    Analyzing foreign trade data allows us to track those flows and better understand global networks of production and consumption qualitatively and assess them quantitatively. In particular, we use an up-to-date in-house version of the UN comtrade database that allows us to formulate complex queries for trade flows over time, across all countries in the world, and match these to knowledge of raw material content in the different trade flows. These analyses are useful on their own (e.g., tracking global flows of copper along all stages of use) or as part of broader assessments, such as criticality assessments (where import reliance is an important factor) or regional material stock and flow models (where raw materials are imported and exported in various forms, from ores to products to scrap).

  • Most of the studies compiled within the Business Unit Raw Materials comprise total systems including a variety of life cycle stages, raw materials, products and processes. Our expertise lies in transforming micro level information and data into the bigger picture. This requires specific knowledge in many different fields – something a single research group is not able to cover. Therefore, we refer to experts to include up-to-date and detailed micro-scale information in our macro-scale assessments.  The interaction formats are individual or small group expert interviews as well as workshops. We resort to our extensive network of experts from science, industry and the public sector. Concrete aims are the collection of raw material-related information, relevant data as well as the validation of assumptions and results.