Peer-reviewed, open-access papers on lithium and battery-metal supply chains. Each is free to read at its DOI.
A 2024 snapshot of who mines and processes lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, copper and aluminium, by country and by company. Copper and aluminium are relatively diverse; lithium and cobalt are concentrated in a few countries and firms.
R. Akhter, S. R. Palli, M. Walanjuwani, E. C. Jones Jr. (2026). Commodities. doi.org/10.3390/commodities5010002
A flexible optimisation framework for critical-mineral supply chains, applied to the global lithium supply chain that energy storage and electric vehicles depend on: where to invest and how to operate as demand, cost and carbon intensity change.
E. C. Jones Jr. (2024). Energies. doi.org/10.3390/en17112685
Experiments on the costly preprocessing step of battery recycling show that shredding and grinding end-of-life batteries with equipment costing under USD 1,000 can produce viable black mass, so the work can be distributed to small sites.
O. S. Atitebi, K. Dumre, E. C. Jones Jr. (2025). Energies. doi.org/10.3390/en18030651
Using the United States as a case study, optimisation models compare shipping whole batteries to central plants with producing black mass at distributed sites first. The decentralised network reduces both operating cost and emissions.
O. S. Atitebi, E. C. Jones Jr. (2025). Logistics. doi.org/10.3390/logistics9030097
