Closing the Loop: Designing an Advanced Hydrometallurgical Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling Facility; Using Duty and Care Ethics to Examine Artisanal Mining Formalization at Kasulo

My technical work explores the idea of closing the loop for precious metals used in batteries. My capstone team created a hydrometallurgy plant designed to take shredded battery material and produce battery-grade lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese. The process was built off of a pre-existing AspenTech file that modeled the unit operations necessary to dissolve and selectively precipitate out the desired materials. Using the AspenTech file as a foundation along with available literature regarding battery leaching reactions, we designed a process that would recycle 100,000 tonnes of shredded battery into desirable raw materials. My STS research focuses on the actions from large scale mining companies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the ethical implications behind their efforts to formalize artisanal mining. Kant’s theory of duty ethics and Gilligan and Noddings’ theory of care ethics are employed as ethical lenses to examine Congo Dongfang International Mining’s formalization efforts at Kasulo mine. My claim is that CDM’s actions at Kasulo mine were a moral failure due to the company’s inability to consider artisanal miners as an end and not exercising an adequate duty of care. My paper explores this idea by not only revealing how CDM’s newly formed relationship with artisanal miners is merely a strategic business decision to maintain production levels, but also showing CDM’s lack of attention given towards the protection of artisanal miners despite their asymmetric relationship.