To ensure the safety of national metal resources by recycling metal resources

Metal resources are exhaustible and non-renewable, and their safe supply plays an important role in national security. The shortage of the core technology of the industrial chain and the structural shortage of the supply chain have always been an important challenge for the security of metal resources in China. Faced with the reality of decreasing global resources and intensifying competition and the requirements of ecological civilization construction, the development and utilization of metal resources in China needs to take the road of circular development. It is necessary and urgent to accelerate the integration and innovation of emerging technologies such as big data and metal resource recycling industry, and greatly improve the efficiency of metal resource recycling for ensuring the security of metal resource supply in China.

It is necessary and feasible to increase the recycling development of metal resources

Recycling of metal resources is an effective way to ensure the security of resource supply. With the increasing risk of overseas resource supply chain and the pressure of resource consumption brought by domestic economic development, the supply of metal resources in mines in China faces great challenges. However, after years of industrialization and urbanization development, the social stock of metal secondary resources in China has reached a new high. In 2021, the number of waste electrical and electronic products will be about 87,000 units. With the popularization and acceleration of electronic products, the accumulation of a variety of rare metals such as gold, copper, platinum and indium in electronic waste has increased significantly. Replacing some mining with secondary resource recycling, especially increasing the recycling of strategic metal resources and rare and precious metal resources, can effectively alleviate the contradiction between supply and demand of metal resources, ensure the security of resource supply, and promote the sustainable development of the industrial system and the supply chain of key resources.

Recycling of metal resources is the requirement of realizing ecological environment safety. On the one hand, the recycling of metal resources can effectively promote pollution prevention and control. At present, "high-tech waste" such as electronic waste has a fast growth rate, large quantity, great harm, and difficult harmless treatment, which seriously restricts environmental protection and social development. According to statistics, the world will produce about 200 million tons of electronic waste in 2020. On the other hand, the secondary resource cycle is an efficient way to break through the development dilemma of high energy consumption and low output. It is estimated that the use of metal secondary resources can save 85%-95% of energy, reduce production costs 50%-70%, such as recycled aluminum production energy consumption is only 4% of the original aluminum production energy consumption. In addition, recycling metals through resource recycling will greatly reduce pollutants and harmful elements produced by traditional smelting processes. Therefore, vigorously developing the metal cycle industry, improving the standard performance of secondary resources, and increasing the proportion of recycled metal resources in the supply of raw materials can achieve the dual purposes of pollution prevention and emission reduction and consumption reduction.

Emerging technologies such as big data can greatly improve the recycling development efficiency of metal resources and improve the ability to guarantee resource security. First, it is expected to achieve a closed-loop cycle of metal resources "from cradle to cradle". Driven by emerging technologies, the metal resource cycle is expected to change the previous linear economic structure of the end management, establish the material flow tracking of the whole life cycle, and maximize the realization of "resource-product-renewable resources" feedback closed-loop. Second, emerging technologies can help the coordinated development of the industry and the precise docking of supply and demand, smooth the internal circulation of the metal resource industry and construction, automobile manufacturing, electronic and electrical manufacturing and other industries, and form a super-circular green economy of resource chain, value chain and innovation chain. Finally, the deep integration of metal resource recycling and emerging technologies such as big data can break through the pain points of the industrial chain such as resource accumulation, green design, clean production, intelligent management, and environmental monitoring, reduce transaction costs and intermediate links between supply and demand sides, optimize supply chain management, and achieve a double jump in capacity scale and product quality.

Problems in the development of recycling industry of metal resources in our country

First, the metal recycling industry is not innovating enough. First, the supply chain is not integrated with emerging technologies, and the recycling rate is not high. Due to the diversity and dispersion of industry recycling subjects, standardized and standardized operation processes have not yet formed, insufficient application of information technology, the lack of major integrated technologies for the whole process of closed-loop from the source to the end, and the systematic integration of raw material collection and operation management is low. Taking recycled aluminum as an example, in 2020, China's recycled aluminum production is 7.4 million tons, and the primary aluminum production is 37.08 million tons, and the proportion of recycled aluminum in aluminum supply is only 16.7%. Second, the technical level of second smelting is limited, and the added value of products is low. The whole industrial chain has low technical content, backward equipment, more primary products and fewer deep-processed products. At present, more than 40% of the existing recycled metal enterprises in the country are backward in process, and the degree of automation and intelligence of equipment is low, especially the key core technology of secondary metallurgy has not yet broken through, and the added value of products is low. The lack of technology in the supply chain and industrial chain leads to the low resource recovery rate and poor quality of resource products in the metal cycle industry, which makes it difficult to improve the resource security guarantee ability of the metal cycle industry.