[Back]

B. Kopacek, P. Kopacek:
"Extracting rare materials from electr(on)ic scrap";
in: "Proceedings of the 16th IFAC Conference on Technology, Culture and International Stability TECIS 2015", Volume 48, Issue 24,; P. Kopacek et al. (ed.); issued by: International Federation of Automatic Control - IFAC; Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Netherlands, 2015, ISSN: 2405-8963, 157 - 161.

As the price for natural resources will increase in the future the goal of this paper is that valuable resources like rare materials have to be extracted and not be wasted. In 2010 the Raw Materials Initiative of the European Commission defined 14 critical raw materials, most of rare metals (including rare earths oxide) which are used for electr(on)ic devices belong to this category. The idea is to recover rare and precious metals from WEEE including lamps and spent batteries by hydrometallurgical processes. Furthermore to develop a mobile plant using hydrometallurgical processes to extract metals like yttrium, indium, lithium, cobalt, zinc, copper, gold, silver, nickel, lead, tin in a high purity (above 95%) from scrap. Because the amount of scrap in industry is usually and to avoid transportation costs, in the framework of two EU projects (HydroWEEE) a mobile and a stationary recycling plant is in development. Another goal of this paper is to contribute to reduce the amount of material for the recovery process and to recognize reusable parts on printed circuit boards (PCB's) in an economic way. Therefore a semi-automated disassembly cell will be shortly described.

End of Life Management, rare materials, semi-automated disassembly.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2015.12.075