Prospective Life Cycle Assessment of Platinum Group Metal Supply Scenarios
H. Song (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
Robert Istrate – Mentor (Universiteit Leiden)
J.B.J. Klimt – Mentor (Universiteit Leiden)
M.W.N. Buxton – Mentor (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)
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Abstract
Platinum group metals (PGMs) are important for low-carbon transport, hydrogen technologies and electronic applications, but their future supply may create substantial environmental burdens. Assessing these burdens requires prospective life cycle assessment (LCA), because future impacts depend on both PGM production routes and the background energy, transport and material systems connected to them. This thesis assessed how the life cycle environmental impacts of PGM supply may develop up to 2050 under multiple foreground supply pathways and REMIND-based prospective background scenarios. A scenario-based prospective LCA was developed for platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium and iridium by combining route-specific foreground inventories, prospective ecoinvent backgrounds and stepwise changes in ore grade, recovery efficiency, energy and material efficiency, secondary-market supply, supply route composition and an exploratory biohydrometallurgical route-substitution case (High + biohydro). The results indicate that future PGM-supply impacts may decline strongly in several midpoint categories, although the direction and magnitude of change vary by scenario and impact category. For IPCC 2021 climate change, the High/1.5C pathway can become negative as a modelled life cycle impact assessment result under the prospective background system, whereas the High + biohydro variant remains slightly positive. The stepwise decomposition shows that the secondary-market transition is one of the strongest foreground mechanisms, reducing residual primary production requirements and shifting supply towards lower-intensity secondary routes. The High + biohydro variant lowers four midpoint impacts but increases 18, indicating route-specific trade-offs rather than uniform environmental improvement. These findings show that prospective PGM supply should be interpreted as a coupled foreground-background system, with biohydrometallurgical results remaining conditional on process proxies and feed-specific inventory limits.