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#### Last updated on 11-Aug-2025 # Urban Mining Lab Urban Mining Lab is based in the department of [Sustainable Energy Engineering](https://www.iitk.ac.in/see/) at [Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur](https://www.iitk.ac.in/) lead by [[Vivek Verma 🧑‍🎓]] ## But what is Urban Mining ? 🤔 > Urban mining is the process of recovering and reusing valuable materials from waste generated by humans. This approach views the built environment and discarded products as a new source of resources. > Which discarded materials are we talking about ? > >Some examples of waste generated in cities: > - Electronic waste (or e-waste): this will include electronics such as computer, phone, laptops, sensors, lights, which contain valuable metals like Lithium, Nickel, Cobalt, gold and silver and also various Rare Earth Elements. > - End of life vehicles: Cars or heavy vehicles (including Electric Vehicles) which are not in use anymore can contain valuable metals > - Used Photovoltaic/solar panels > > Some examples of valuable waste generated in industries: > - Tailings (or leftover products from mining) can contain diverse range of metals depending on the primary ores > - Slags: Metallurgical industries producing metals like zinc copper tin produce a lot of byproduct called slag > - Electrochemical processes also produce a lot of valuable metals containing waste which is referred to as anode slimes > - Spent catalyst used in various chemical industries. > ![[News & Updates 📆]] ![[SpentBatteries.png|600]] Fig: *Spent 18650 cylindrical Li-ion batteries* > ## Quick Navigation Links on this website > > - Interested to know if you can join our team? Check [[Openings 🚪]]. > - Overview of what we do in our lab: [[Lab work in brief 🥼]] > - Recent [[News & Updates 📆]] from our group > - Recent [[Publications 📜]] > - [[Contact Us 🪪]] ![[Critical Metals😥]] ![[Affiliations]]