End of Life Electronics Recycling and Asset Recovery Solution

8/7/2019 End of Life Electronics Recycling and Asset Recovery Solution

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End of Life Electronics Recycling and Asset Recovery Solution

1. Abstract

Electronic waste (E-waste) is the most rapidly growing waste problem in the world.

It is crisis not only of quantity but also a crisis born from toxic ingredients such

as the lead, beryllium, mercury, cadmium, and brominated-flame retardants that

pose serious adverse impacts on the environment and human health. Local

governments are facing huge costs to handle e-waste, and even greater costs (for

medical treatment and eco-recovery) if they do not capture this toxic stream and

handle it in an appropriate manner.

Formal facilities with a financially viable, environmentally benign and safe WEEE

(Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) management system are planned

and developed in Asia.

In fact, the e-wastes are generated from both end-users and manufacturers.

Electronics recycling is an absolutely right choice which is both a means of

preventing the land disposal of toxic metals in e-waste and recovering some value.

Waste generation can be reduced by reusing appliances or components. Hence

the product life spans increase and the impacts decrease.

Also further refining processes that recover valuable materials such as precious

metals, copper, iron, lead, plastics, etc. The applied processes appear in an

enormous variety in different contexts around the world.

The focus of this paper is on manual dismantling & sorting, mechanical recycling

& refining and final disposal processes. The technologies applied determine the

impacts of the system on humans and the environment.

The existence of informal sectors combined with a lack of environmental

awareness among electrical and electronics producers, collectors, recyclers and

consumers, are contributing to enormous difficulties in developing a financially
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and environmentally sound recycling and disposal system. The implementation

WEEE directive and Extended Producer Responsibilities (EPR) in Europe Union,

should be a driving force to the local governments and the communities to

develop formal WEEE legislation and processing industry.

This paper discusses the current status of E-waste problems and its impacts on

the environment, human health, report of a visiting in Guiyu in the southern

province of Guangdong, China and formal WEEE recycling and disposal facilities

and processes.

Keywords: Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE

directive); E-waste; electronics recycling; Extended Producer Responsibilities

(EPR).

2. Statistics of E-waste generated in China

Statistics show that the Chinese dump roughly 1.11 million tons of electronic

wastes from discarded home appliances. State Environmental Protection

Administration of China ()(SEPA) voices concern over their

ability to deal with such a large amount of waste.

Every year, China disposed off at least 5 million television sets, 4 million

refrigerators, 5 million washing machines, 5 million computers, and tens of

millions of cell phones, government statistics shows. Health specialists say

e-waste contains excessive poisonous elements such as lead, mercury and

cadmium that are extremely harmful to both human and the environment.

Meanwhile, China has a large number of illegal e-waste collectors, who often take

away the precious metal in exchange for money, and the less valuable parts they

throw away can cause serious pollution to soil, air and groundwater, affecting

environment and human health.

In response to the growing concern over how China will manage its increasing

piles of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), central government


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departments are expected to enforce regulations governing the treatment of

waste electrical and electronic equipment this year. The regulations will make

producers responsible for the collection, recycling and reuse of waste products.

3. Statistics of E-waste generated in Hong Kong

According to the Environment, Transport and Industry Authorities, for the past 3

years, Hong Kong has accumulated up to a total of 2 million pieces of electronic

waste and products (Picture 1), occupying a surface area of 128,000 sq ft, which

is equivalent to the size of 64 standard swimming pools. In addition, electronic

waste increases by 3 times in every 5 years.

Picture 1: E-waste problem is serious

4. Definition and generation of e-waste in China

There is no standard or generally accepted definition of e-waste in the world. In

most cases, e-waste comprises the relatively expensive and essentially durable

products used for data processing, telecommunications or entertainment in

private households and businesses. According to the definition given in waste

electrical and electronic equipment Directive (WEEE Directive) consists of the 9

categories that are listed in Table 1.

Table 1: WEEE categories according to the EU directive.

No. Category Label

1 Large household appliances Large HH

2 Small household appliances Small HH

3 IT & telecommunications equipment ICT

4 Consumer equipment CE

5 Lighting equipment Lighting


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6 Electrical and electronic tools (with the exception of largescale stationary industrial tools)

E&E tools

7 Toys, leisure and sports equipment Toys8 Medical devices (with the exception of all implanted andinfected products)

Medicalequipment

9 Monitoring and control instrument M&C

In the final draft of Ordinance on the Management of Waste Household Electrical

and Electronic Products Recycling and Disposal (

), the regulated items include TV sets, refrigerators, washing machines, air

conditioners and personal computers as the first stage. The types of items to be

regulated will be increased by amending the list after the enactment of the

legislation.

5. Informal e-waste recycling processes

Currently the majority of e-waste in China is processed in backyards or small

workshops using primary methods such as manual disassembly and open

burning. The appliances are stripped of their most valuable and easily extracted

components/ materials such as printed wiring boards (PWB), cathode ray tubes

(CRTs), cables, plastics, metals, condensers and the worthless materials such as

batteries, liquid crystal displays (LCDs) or wood. These fractions are processed to

directly reusable components and secondary raw materials in a variety of refining

and conditioning processes. The remaining parts are dumped or stockpiled

directly.

6. Adverse impacts from the informal recycling processes

The existing informal recycling and disposal of e-waste in China (Picture 2) has

caused serious consequences to the surrounding environment and human health.

A site visit at Guiyu town are conducted from Hong Kong on 12th March 2005, it is

found that the long-term informal recycling of e-wastes in Guiyu appeared to have

adverse impacts on the environment and the health of the people working/ living

there. This type of primary and informal recycling must be prohibited and replaced

by environmentally sound manners.


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Picture 2: Informal Recycling Workshops

7. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)

The introduction of extended producer responsibility (EPR) with well-defined roles

for all participants producers, users, authorities and waste managers is

essential for designing an effective e-waste management system. Five

parameters, namely the elaboration of the legal regulation, system coverage,

system financing, producers responsibility and compliance ensuring, have

identified to characterize an e-waste management system.

8. Technical processes in advanced facilities

As the business prospects for e-waste recycling in China are good, large-scale

facilities with formal and advanced technical processes with a financially viable,

environmentally benign and safe WEEE management system have been built or

are being planned and constructed.

9. Material Flow and Recycling Concept

The operations are described in following material flows diagrams and

paragraphs (Picture 3).


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Picture 3: Material flows diagrams

10. Dismantling

Manual dismantling (Picture 4) is the first, more traditional way to separate

hazardous materials from recyclable materials, and to generate recyclable

materials from electronic waste (Picture 5). In a pre-sorting process, the incoming

electronic waste first is separated into the different categories, which are to be

handled separately in the following dismantling and sorting process. The

dismantling process itself is performed with simple tools such as screwdrivers,

hammers and tongs.
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Picture 4: Manual dismantling of electronic products


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Picture 5: Recyclable products generated after dismantling

Mechanical disassembly is the second (Picture 6), more modern way to separate

hazardous materials and to generate recyclable materials from electronic waste.

In a pre-sorting process, the incoming electronic waste first is separated into the

different categories, which are to be handled separately in the following

dismantling and sorting process. The dismantling process itself is performed

mechanically. Typical components of a mechanical dismantling plant are crushing
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units, shredders, magnetic separators and air separators. The exhaust gases are

cleaned up in waste gas purification plants and the dust generated collected with

dust filters. Indoor exposure is monitored and assessed (Picture 7).

Picture 6: Mechanical dismantling of electronic products


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Picture 7: Recyclable products generated after mechanical dismantling


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11. Refining

Most of the fractions need to be refined or conditioned in order to be sold as

secondary raw materials or to be disposed of in a final disposal site, respectively.

Refining includes mechanical, thermal and chemical processes. It is typically

performed for fractions such as batteries, CRTs, ferrous and non-ferrous metals,

recyclable plastics and printed circuit boards. Many refining processes take place

modern facilities and management teams (Picture 8).

Picture 8: Refining Process

12. Disposal

The final disposal of materials from dismantling, refining and conditioning

processes takes place in landfills. Landfills are subject to relatively strict emission

controls and are comparatively restrictive regarding the materials accepted.

Normally, less than 10% by original volume of materials are non-recyclable and
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disposed.

Picture 9: Landfill processes

13. Modern Recycling System

The system considers material flows related to electronic equipment from the

point where it becomes waste until the point where the fractions resulting from

sorting, dismantling, recycling and disposal processes become secondary raw

materials or are disposed of in a landfill.

Within the system modeled, distinctions were made among collection processes,

transportation processes, sorting and dismantling processes and finally recycling

and disposal processes. Recycling processes were included in the system

boundaries whenever they were required for the generation of secondary rawmaterials from these fractions. For the materials not recycled, the respective

disposal processes were included (Picture 10).


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Picture 10: Recycling System

14. Transportation

Transportation processes include transport from the consumers to the licensed

companies and transport from the licensed companies to the recycling and

disposal sites.


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15. Secondary raw materials

Batteries:

Rechargeable batteries shall be collected and sorted, reusable batteries shall be

reused in other electronics, and other batteries shall be transferred to EPDs

rechargeable battery recycling bins. The batteries contain materials of good value

that can be recovered and re-used, the metals shall be recycled in Korean

factories.

Picture 11: Battery Recycling System

Other hazardous materials:

Liquid form of hazardous materials shall be incinerated in a hazardous wasteincinerator and landfill respectively (Picture 12).

Heavy metals shall be recovered for the secondary metals production.


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Picture 12: Battery and chemical handling

Metals:

For a comparison with the respective primary production, the production of metals

from secondary raw materials resulting from the sorting and dismantling process

has been included in the system analysed. Most of the metals resulting from

sorting and dismantling were Fe-metals, it was assumed that 10% of the fraction

would be non-metallic material or precious metals.

Plastics:

Plastic are recycled in plastic recycling plants, the recycled plastics are mainly

thermoplastic which shall be used as secondary raw materials in pallets form.

Cables:

The resulting plastics fraction is recycled or disposed, while the copper fraction is

sold to the copper industry. The latter is considered as a secondary raw material.

Cathode Ray Tubes (CRT):

Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) are treated in CRT treating plant, outer parts such as

metals, plastic and glass are dismantled for materials recycling, the heavy metals

in CRT are chemical disposed or recycled. Cables are treated as copper

recycling.


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Printed Wired Boards (PWB):

Precious metal recovering plants shall extract precious metals and copper from

Printed Wired Boards (PWB). The residues are consisted of fibers, ash, plastic

are disposed.

Other waste:

Other waste consists mainly of packaging materials such as cartons, paper,

metals that are collected and recycled or remanufactured.

Operations stages of Recycling System

The complete recycling plant consists of several crushing and sorting processes

which are linked by conveyors. The feed must be presorted, in order minimize the

material processing operation as well as to achieve an optimum value-added from

the products obtained. This requires that the material is dry, when it is fed into the

recycling plant. (Picture 13)

Picture 13: Recycling plant

The multi-stage size reduction which can be adjusted to the material to be

processed will crush the material into a determined grain size, in order to break upmetal parts.

In the individual separation stages, various pneumatic, magnetic and electrostatic

separation processes are used and adjusted to the individual charge, in order to

obtain optimum results.


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Pre crushing stage

The electronic scrap which was dismounted and mostly feed from harmful

substances will be put on to the feeding conveyor and transported to a knife

disintegrator.

Hammer mill crushing stage

The hammer mill is designed to break down perished and presorted plastic/ metal

composites to a degree that the resulting milled material mix can be separated in

subsequent treatment processes into marketable concentrates of valuable

substances and residual fractions to be disposed of.

An over belt magnetic-separator separates a magnetic iron fraction and protects

the hammer mill against coarse magnetic iron pieces.

The heavy fraction is discharged to the distributing chute, flatly distributed, cooled

and conveyed to a drum magnet.

The magnetic Fe-particles are drawn out and dropped into a storage box via a

chute. The nonmagnetic heavy fraction is discharged onto a belt conveyor and fed

to the screening machine to the subsequent metal separation.

Air jig separation stage

The air jig separation stage is needed for separating particles with a large density

from particles with a low density. The condition for a good separation is that the

particles are similar in grain size and grain shape.

So it is possible to separate metals and plastics from each other, because in the

hammer mill crushing stage the particles get a similar grain shape and the

machine produces close size fraction.

The separated dust and foils are sucked through the ventilator, separated in the

vibrating filter and discharged via the cellular wheel sluice into a big bag filling

device.


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Electrostatic separation stage

During the fine crushing of the printed circuits and connectors reasonable

amounts of fine metallic particles are produced which cannot be separated by the

air table separation stage because these particles are too light.

These particles can be separated in an electrostatic separator, specially a corona

roller separator.

During the corona separation the material fed onto a rotating roller is sprayed with

electrical charges by means of the high-tension corona electrode. Conducting

particles, such as most metals are, can immediately pass on these charges to the

grounded roller. This means that their dropping from the roller is not or not

decisively affected. However, no conducting particles cannot or only slowly pass

the charges on to the roller. The results depend on the difference between that

resulting electrostatic adhesive power and the centrifugal force caused by the

roller speed.

Conclusions

The informal e-waste recycling processes must be prohibited by legislation and

replaced by large-scale facilities as soon as possible. More research shall be

done in order to estimate and more precisely predict the amount of e-waste that is

likely to be generated and then to quantify the cost and environmental impacts of

the whole recycling system, and the asset recovery as well.

It is essential that the WEEE Directive and EPR is defined well enough to

establish an effective management framework. The speed of development is

depending on the producers corporate social responsibility, environmental

awareness and the governments legislative enforcement.

Electronics recycling industries is a very important and have a huge potential

business; it can save our existing resources and establish more new commercial

opportunity and employment chances.


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References

1. EU Directive 2002/96/EC of European Parliament and of the Council of

27January 2003 on waste electrical and electronic equipments (WEEE),

13/02/2003, 2002. http://www.europe.eu.int/eur-lex/en/.

2. The recycling and disposal of electrical and electronic waste in China

legislative and market response, 3/6/2005. http://www.sciencedirect.com.

3. Electrical and electronic waste management in China: progress and the

barriers to overcome

4. Environmental Protection Department - Rechargeable battery recycling

http://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/tc_chi/environmentinhk/waste/prob_solutions/wast

e_rbrp.html

5. Swire Sita Waste Services - http://www.swiresita.com/

6. Xinhua News Agency September 23, 2005

Source of article:

Mr. Lau Ki Chung, Stephen B.Eng (Hons), M.Eng in Environmental Engineering

Environmental and Operational Manager

Li Tong Group
http://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/tc_chi/environmentinhk/waste/prob_solutions/waste_rbrp.htmlhttp://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/tc_chi/environmentinhk/waste/prob_solutions/waste_rbrp.htmlhttp://www.swiresita.com/http://www.litong.com/http://www.litong.com/http://www.swiresita.com/http://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/tc_chi/environmentinhk/waste/prob_solutions/waste_rbrp.htmlhttp://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/tc_chi/environmentinhk/waste/prob_solutions/waste_rbrp.html

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End of Life Electronics Recycling and Asset Recovery Solution