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Cobalt element Critical Material

Cobalt (Co), atomic number 27. This element-level record uses the ChEBI cobalt-atom identifier for chemical identity. Cobalt-bearing cathodes and mixed battery black mass are material forms and secondary resources, respectively; neither is a mineral species or synonymous with the element. The dated US designation maps the listed cobalt commodity to this element record; it does not designate every cobalt-bearing mineral or waste stream.

Identifiers & Classification

System Identifier Label
CHEBI CHEBI:27638 cobalt atom

Criticality Designations

Jurisdiction List Name Edition / Document Classification Source
European Union Regulation (EU) 2024/1252, Annex II, Section 1, List of critical raw materials 2024; original regulation published 3 May 2024; entry (h) cobalt critical eu_crma_2024
United States of America USGS Final List of Critical Minerals 2025; Federal Register 90:50494-50497; published 7 November 2025 critical usgs2025

Microbial & Biochemical Mechanisms (1)

Acidophilic consortium bioleaching of battery black mass

bioleaching Microbial

An adapted Lake Hromnice acidophilic consortium mobilized cobalt from pretreated spent nickel-manganese-cobalt lithium-ion battery black mass. Sulfur oxidation supplied acidity; iron cycling may also contribute. This is community-level laboratory evidence, not a pure-strain mechanism or industrial deployment.

Experimental Context & Analytical Limits:
Two-step flask assay: 10% (v/v) inoculum, 50 mL FeS medium (50 mM ferrous sulfate; 1% w/v elemental sulfur; initial pH 2.0), seven-day preculture, then 1% w/v black mass for seven days at 30 degrees C and 150 rpm. Feed pretreatment included discharging, dismantling, thermal treatment, crushing and sorting. The original enrichment was dominated by Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans (95%); Alicyclobacillus comprised 3%. Post-adaptation composition was not established here. Adaptation used dissolved-metal mixtures in three 14-day stages; Table 2 doses do not consistently match Table 1 black-mass equivalents, limiting reproducibility.
Curated Evidence Points:
Sections 2.1-2.5 and 3.1-3.3; Figures 4-6: dissolved Co peaked by day 2 and was higher with adapted culture than non-adapted and sterile-medium controls. ICP-OES measures mobilization, not isolated product recovery. The abiotic control differed in pH and iron speciation, so it does not isolate acidity from other microbial contributions.

Sources & References

  1. chebi_cobalt: ChEBI CHEBI:27638 — cobalt atom
    https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chebi/CHEBI:27638 (accessed 2026-10-06)
  2. eu_crma_2024: Regulation (EU) 2024/1252, Annex II, Section 1 — List of critical raw materials
    https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32024R1252 (accessed 2026-10-06)
  3. lalropuia_2024: Lalropuia et al. (2024). Metal recovery from spent lithium-ion batteries via two-step bioleaching using adapted chemolithotrophs from an acidic mine pit lake. Frontiers in Microbiology 15:1347072.
    https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2024.1347072 (accessed 2026-10-06)
  4. usgs2025: USGS (2025). Final 2025 List of Critical Minerals. Federal Register 90:50494-50497, document 2025-19813; cobalt in the final commodity table.
    https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-11-07/html/2025-19813.htm (accessed 2026-10-09)

Curation History

Timestamp Curator Action Summary
2026-10-08T02:35:57Z Codex (GPT-6; Codex) provenance_adoption Appended canonical history reference and this present adoption event. Earlier scientific review artifacts remain linked in the sidecar; scientific content is unchanged and was not reassessed.
2026-10-09T04:45:25Z Codex (GPT-6; Codex) criticality_addition Added the US 2025 cobalt commodity designation and its scoped mapping while preserving existing mechanism and EU evidence.

Record source: data/records/cobalt.yaml