Analysis of cobalt flows in mainland China: exploring the potential opportunities for improving resource efficiency and supply security

Abstract Cobalt is an increasingly important strategic metal with the emerging of clean energy technologies. China is a resource scarcity country but the world’s largest cobalt consumer. It is of great strategic significance to study the application and current status of cobalt resources for the sustainable development of China’s economy. The objective of this study is to quantitatively investigate the status of cobalt flows from raw materials to waste management in mainland China in 2015 by using material flows analysis (MFA), and to identify the material efficiency and supply security strategy for sustainable use of cobalt. The results show that China’s overall supply of raw materials, chemical production and product manufacture of cobalt in 2015 were 66.5 kt, 62.9 kt and 45.4kt, respectively. China’s cobalt is highly reliant on imports with a dependency of over 80%. Cobalt outflows were mainly from exports of cobalt chemicals and end-use products. At the end-use product stage, batteries consume the most cobalt, followed by superalloys, cemented carbides and magnets. The emerging of the electric vehicle industry seems to increase the burden of cobalt supply, but also represents huge opportunities for cobalt recycling as a secondary resource. Future efforts on improving material efficiency and ensuring supply security should focus on reducing losses at the beneficiation process by technology upgrades, improving the cobalt recycling rate by integrating cobalt resources into China’s circular economy and environment policy, and establishing national cobalt collection system. This study can provide guidance for future decision-making around the clean production and rational utilization of cobalt resources.