Composition and Critical Mineral Content of Major Industrial Wastewaters: Implications for Treatment and Resource Recovery Technologies

The widespread presence of CMs in industrial wastewater has motivated the development of wastewater resource recovery or valorization technologies aimed at enhancing supply chain resilience and mitigating environmental impacts.

However, wastewater characteristics are highly variable, and data describing them are often limited or incomplete, leading researchers to rely on synthetic substitutes that may not reflect realistic properties. To better guide this research, here we compile and analyze the pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), total organic carbon (TOC), inorganic composition, CM content, and generation rates of wastewater streams from twenty-two individual industrial activities.