The Growing Global Demand for Element Gallium: Electrical and Electronic Waste and Coal Fly Ash as Alternative Sources for its Sustainable Supply

Gallium (Ga) is listed among the critical elements because of its high demand, low crustal concentration and dispersed occurrence. Growth in demand for this element is a response to proliferation in production of electronic devices and a global effort to decarbonised power production. This situation calls for exploitation of alternative sources such as fly ash and recycling processes from finished products. Wide implementation of these options is yet to be witnessed or still in their infancy with only a few facilities worldwide. This is attributable to low material intensity per unit product and the fact that this kind of waste has not accumulated high enough to attract recycling for instance. Most gallium bearing devices though have other critical, precious and or non-precious elements that co-exist with it. These co-existing elements are relatively high in concentrations and some of them are already being recycled from the same end-of-life products. Therefore an option that involves co-recovery of gallium together with other co-existing elements which are already being recycled and extraction from other sources such as fly ash is to be a viable pursuit in sustaining gallium supply. Viability stems on the similarities of gallium concentration in those sources, recovery methods and conditions used in recycling of gallium. More research however, to explore potential combinations of co-existing metals to be co-extracted with and methods to be employed is vital.