Digitally Enabled Sustainable Metals Recycling: Highlights from the SUMER Webinar

How can digital technologies help unlock more value from critical metals recovered from e-waste?

On 29 September 2026, DICE Network+ hosted a webinar with researchers from the EPSRC-funded SUMER project, exploring how digital technologies can support more sustainable and efficient metals recycling for a circular economy.

The transition to a circular economy depends on our ability to recover, reuse and retain the value of critical materials that would otherwise be lost to waste. At the same time, increasing demand for critical metals is creating new challenges for sustainable resource supply, particularly as these materials become essential to net zero technologies and an increasingly digital economy.

The webinar explored how digital technologies are helping to advance sustainable metals recycling and support the development of more efficient, data-driven separation processes. Drawing on research from the SUMER project, experts from the UCL Department of Chemical Engineering demonstrated how digital twins can be used to capture process data, develop predictive models and provide new insights into complex metal separation systems.

Through a case study focused on the recovery of samarium, a critical metal widely used in high-performance magnets, the speakers showed how predictive modelling and optimisation approaches can support the design of more efficient recycling processes.

The webinar featured Panagiota Angeli, Federico Galvanin, Eric Fraga, Konstantinos Katsoulas, Malik Olasinde, Nicholas Snead, and Arun Pankajakshan.