Critical Minerals and Supply Chains

The materials behind batteries and electronics: where lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite are mined and processed, how trade and policy move them, and how recycling can bring them back into use. We build optimization models of these supply chains and test recycling processes in the lab.

These are the projects and publications we have done in this area. Each project links to its full page on erickjonesphd.com, and each publication links to the paper.

Projects

Publications

• Akhter, R., Palli, S.R., Walanjuwani, M., & Jones, E.C., Jr. (2026). Mapping the supply chain of lithium-ion battery metals from mine to primary processing by country and corporation. Commodities, 5(1), 2. Paper
• Alavi, S., Aghapour, R., & Jones, E.C., Jr. (2026). Modeling policy-driven dynamics in the multi-regional lithium supply chain. Proceedings of the IISE Annual Conference & Expo 2026.
• Atitebi, O.S., Jones, E.C., Jr., Dumre, K., & Shelor, C.P. (2026). Experimental design for optimized recovery of critical minerals from lithium-ion battery black mass: Bridging sustainability and process efficiency. Proceedings of the IISE Annual Conference & Expo 2026.
• Jones, E.C., Jr. (2026). The missing link to secure battery minerals: Intermediate processing. UMD–GMU Boot Camp Policy Brief.
• Jones, E.C., Jr. (2026). 3R-BET: Remanufacturing, repurposing, and recycling battery and energy technologies. Proceedings of the IISE Annual Conference & Expo 2026.
• Jones, E.C., Jr., & Jones, E.C., Sr. (2026). Megawatts to zettaflops: A techno-economic framework for grid-tied behind-the-meter architectures in AI data centers. Electricity, 7(2), 43. Paper
• Nukala, T., Shahriar, M.A., Bonsu, M., Atitebi, O.S., Dumre, K., Yang, Y., Joshi, S.S., Jones, E.C., Jr., & Shelor, C.P. (2026). Upcycling graphite from spent Li-ion batteries into graphite–Nylon 12 composite for powder bed fusion additive manufacturing. Proceedings of the IISE Annual Conference & Expo 2026.
• Atitebi, O.S., & Jones, E.C., Jr. (2025). Centralized vs. decentralized black-mass production: A comparative analysis of lithium reverse logistics supply chain networks. Logistics, 9(3), 97. Paper
• Atitebi, O.S., Dumre, K., & Jones, E.C., Jr. (2025). Supporting a lithium circular economy via reverse logistics: Improving the preprocessing stage of the lithium-ion battery recycling supply chain. Energies, 18, 651. Paper
• Jones, E.C., Jr. (2025). Climate and trade policy for risk management: The need for geopolitical analytical frameworks for supply chain and energy system modeling. Current Sustainable/Renewable Energy Reports, 12, 9. Paper
• Jones, E.C., Jr. (2024). Lithium supply chain optimization: A global analysis of critical minerals for batteries. Energies, 17, 2685. Paper
• Burgos, J.C., Jones, E., & Balbuena, P.B. (2014). Dynamics of topological defects in single-walled carbon nanotubes during catalytic growth. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 118(9), 4808–4817. Paper
• Burgos, J.C., Jones, E., & Balbuena, P.B. (2011). Effect of the metal–substrate interaction strength on the growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 115(15), 7668–7675. Paper