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Challenges in Metal Recycling

Challenges in Metal Recycling. Damien O’Brien 10099255 Paper by: Barbara K. Reck * and T. E. Graedel Center for Industrial Ecology, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University. Introduction. Overview What is EOL-RR Three most important findings

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Challenges in Metal Recycling

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  1. Challenges in Metal Recycling Damien O’Brien 10099255 Paper by: Barbara K. Reck* and T. E. Graedel Center for Industrial Ecology, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University

  2. Introduction • Overview • What is EOL-RR • Three most important findings • Why do specialty metals have such low recycling rates? • What are the activities with the greatest potential for improving metal recycling? • Why is this an area of interest/concern from a sustainability perspective for the electronics industry? • Conclusion • Questions

  3. Overview • Recycling is a process to change materials (waste) into new products to: • prevent waste of potentially useful materials, • reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, • reduce energy usage, • reduce • air pollution (from incineration) and • water pollution (from landfills) • by reducing the need for “conventional” waste disposal.(Wikipedia)

  4. What is EOL-RR • The EOL-RR (End of life recycling rate) is the ‘fraction of metal in discarded products that is reused in such a way as to retain its functional properties’ =

  5. Most important findings • In the past few years almost every metal has been introduced to various products for there physical/chemical properties. • In the past • Few metals in relatively large amounts • In more recent years (In order to make the design faster/stronger/more reliable) • More metals with relatively small amounts of the extra metals • The mixture/combinations of the metals also varies from product to product • Harder to separate/recycle

  6. Most important findings • EOL-RR varies a lot from metal to metal but this range is from less than 1% to >50%, the metals which tend to be speciality metals • Speciality metals are elements that are used for their specific chemical or functional properties, they tend to be used in small amounts in products.

  7. EOL-RR for each Metal

  8. Most important findings • Best example of where the customers and businesses are educated on how to recycle the products is car batteries: • As a result of the amount of collection and reuse of the zinc in car batteries: • Zinc has an EOL-RR of 90-95% • Almost a closed loop system • Shows that if: • people know how to recycle the product and • the correct procedures are in place • Almost closed loop systems are possible

  9. Why do specialty metals have such low recycling rates? • The processes involved in recycling are • Collection (gathering used metals to be recycled) • Pre-processing (repeated sorting using manual, magnetic, optical etc.) • End-processing (thermo-dynamic processes optimised for each metal)

  10. Why do specialty metals have such low recycling rates? • The reason recycling rates for these metals is so low is that • When products are brought to the recycling plants • They have procedures in place to separate the common metals (copper, zinc, aluminium) • The mixture that is left is the combination of the speciality metals. • If the plant does not have enough of this mixture, it is not worth the energy/cost of extracting and separating the speciality metals.

  11. What are the activities with the greatest potential for improving metal recycling? • If better collection activities are introduced and as much of the speciality metals as possible are sent to recycling plants. • It will then be of benefit to them to • invest in the pre-processing activities for the metals as they will then be able to sell the metals on again rather than scrapping these speciality metals.

  12. Why is this an area of interest/concern from a sustainability perspective for the electronics industry? • If recycling processes improve for speciality metals it affects the business in 2 ways: • The energy costs of recycling should be less than the cost of extraction this means cheaper speciality metals • The closer to a closed loop system it becomes, the more constant these prices will stay into the future meaning that future products prices will be less affected by the rising cost of the raw materials.

  13. Conclusion • Increased pallet of metals in products means that recycling procedures do not exist for these new metals • The EOL-RR of speciality metals are MUCH lower than the likes of Zinc as efficient recycling processes do not exist. • Speciality metals are not cost effective to recycle as the collection amounts of the metals are so low. • Better collection systems would increase the efficiency of the pre and post processing facilities • This means possibly lower but more importantly more stable prices in the future

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