Companies from several links in the manufacturing and recycling supply chain have invested to offer more end-of-life options for collected WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment) scrap. Presenters at the 2015 Electronics Recycling Asia event, held in Singapore in mid-November, portrayed several recent efforts.
Sreepadaraj Karanam, from the Singapore office of Saudi Arabia-based SABIC, said his company is working with OEMs to explore the “opportunity for upcycling” the stream of plastic scrap that comprises part of the overall WEEE sector.
The company has developed several exclusive recycled-content resins, said Karanam, that offer a “cradle-to-cradle” mechanical recycling option for plastics derived from the e-scrap stream. SABIC’s goal, he said, is “to be a global supplier of choice of recycled resins.”
The custom resins produced by SABIC include one made from polystyrene compact disc and DVD jewel cases and others made from polycarbonate and ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) plastic scrap
Barriers remain, said Karanam, including achieving sufficient economies of scale and convincing buyers to overcome some aesthetic objections, including comparatively restricted color choices versus virgin resins. But “if we do this right,” said Karanam, “we believe there is an opportunity for innovation along the entire value chain.”
Ted Pak of the South Korean regional office of Germany-based TOMRA Sorting Solutions GmbH, said the wide variety of sorting and separating equipment available from the company has increased the quantity and quality of secondary commodities recoverable from obsolete electronics
Among the equipment available from TOMRA are NIR (near infrared), XRT (X-ray transmission) and XRF (X-ray fluorescence) devices that can conduct automated metals and polymer sorting of shredded e-scrap, said Park
He offered an example of a refrigerator shredding and recycling plant where a TOMRA retrofit created a system that now produces 97-to-99 percent pure aluminum and copper fractions; a 97-to-99 percent pure ABS fraction; and a 94-to-96 percent pure polypropylene product. “Their bargaining power has increased” when selling materials, said Park, and the company earned a return on investment in the system in less than one year, he added.
Professor Ma Hsiao-Kang of National Taiwan University provided an overview of a mobile hydrometallurgical tin and gold stripping process offered by Taiwan-based UWin Nanotech Company Ltd.
The product is ideal for recovering 99.9 percent pure gold and 99.96 percent pure tin oxide from printed circuit boards in a safe and environmentally sound way, said Ma. He said Uwin also is developing other products, including a system to recover copper from mixed materials.
Electronics Recycling Asia 2015 was organized by Switzerland-based ICM AG and held at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore Nov. 10-13.