Repurposing and Circular Economy of Material Recovered from a Vehicle Retrofitting Model: A Homologation-Centered Approach for Non-Mediterranean Africa

Solid Waste Management in Non-Mediterranean Africa has proved to be a growing challenge, predicted to soar to the end of the twenty-first century. Coupled with the recent ambitions to retrofit old and already manufactured internal combustion engine vehicles to new energy vehicles, if mismanaged, metallic wastes generated as by-products can exacerbate the challenge. This paper explored a sustainable beneficiation, valorization, and re-purposing circular economy strategy centered on homologation, as a combination of hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical metal extraction, metal processing and product fabrication approaches are proposed. The strategy recovers the metals into bars, ready for further valorization using advanced manufacturing techniques to make products that can be viable in the automotive industry. The value of this approach is translatable to a viable business model, practical for Non-Mediterranean Africa.