Long-term demand and supply of non-ferrous mineral resources by a mineral balance model

We develop a mineral resource balance model to assess sustainable supply for such as copper, zinc, and lead up to 2150. This constitutes from a demand projection model whose outputs are exogenously given to a supply-side model, which expresses simplified structure of material flow and stock, from ore production by mining, smelting, and refining, new and old scraps, manufacturing final product to satisfy the final demand, stocks for in-use and out-of-use, disposal, and recycling. Our model is distinct in the long term and global level, modeling both supply and demand sides in various mineral resources by applying linear programming to minimize discounted sum of overall system cost of the resources. Results indicate that the demand of copper, zinc, and lead in 2100 increases by some two to five times compared with those in 2010. This is similar level compared with those in existing studies that employed different modeling approaches. Mineral production from ore in copper and lead peaks out around 2040 satisfying the demand by scrap recycling, while zinc ore production shows continuous increase because of difficulties in metal recovery. Development of new ore deposit and promotion of scrap recycling are strongly demanded to meet the final demand projections. © 2017, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.