http://cs.furman.edu/~chealy/fys1107/PAPERS/recycl
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Posted On: 01/19/2014 4:13:37 PM
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http://cs.furman.edu/~chealy/fys1107/PAPERS/recycle.pdf
(shredders, competition and such..)
(repost thx Ustmel)
(shredders, competition and such..)
Overcapacity isn’t preventing
Canadian-based recycler Global
Electric Electronic Processing
(GEEP) from investing millions
in new equipment. GEEP, part
of Barrie Metals Group in On
-
tario, operates a state-of-the-art
370,000 square foot facility in
Durham, North Carolina. The
company processes discarded
telecom equipment for corpo
-
rate clients and recently opened
a $4 million chain shredder and
hammer mill-based processing
line. Material from the chain
shredder is sorted and sent to
the hammer mill, where it’s sized
into fine gravel and mechanical
-
ly separated into ferrous, non-
ferrous, and plastic material. The
harvested material (steel, copper,
aluminum, and glass) is sold as
raw feedstock to manufacturers.
The company is also building a
facility to convert recycled mixed
plastic into diesel fuel
A
typical PC consists of 23 percent
plastic, 32 percent ferrous met
-
als, 18 percent nonferrous met
-
als, and 12 percent electronic
boards (gold, palladium, silver,
and platinum).
Recycling plants operate heavy-
duty shredders to reduce e-waste
into uniform rough pieces. Sort
-
ing the resulting shred is increas
-
ingly profitable. A few years ago,
the rare metal indium used in
LCD screen mobile phones sold
for less than $100/kg. Between
2005 and 2007, the price fluctuat
-
ed between $700/kg and $1,000/
kg (see http://minerals.usgs.gov/
minerals/pubs/commodity/indium/
indiumcs07.pdf). Analysts ex
-
pect the demand for indium to
increase as companies ramp up
large-scale manufacturing of thin-
film solar technology.
Given the considerable
opportunities of e-waste recy
-
cling, some companies have in
-
vested in new technology that
sorts additional materials.
One of the most advanced re
-
covery systems currently on the
market is the Titech X-Tract
Separator and Finder. Wendt
Corporation, the US distribu
-
tor, says the X-Tract and Finder
pick up where the ECS leaves
off. The Finder recovers most of
the stainless steel missed by the
ECS and the X-Tract separates
99 percent of the aluminum
from heavier metals. The X-
Tract (see Figure 2) sends x-rays
through unsorted nonferrous
metal shred, using receivers
to turn the x-rays into high-
resolution x-ray images, and the
machine sorts the material by
comparing the relative bright
-
ness of the images. The higher
the atomic density of the mate
-
rial, the darker the image.
The X-Tract, equipped with a
fiber optics high-speed computer
control system, has a hefty price
tag (about $700,000, depending
on the configuration), but recov
-
ers up to 2,000 lbs (1,000 kg) of
valuable metals per truckload of
ECS waste. Prices of scrap metal
have soared in recent years, in
part because of demand from
China. The US exports more
than $1 billion of scrap to China
annually.
Plastic recycling technology is
also showing progress, in large
part due to the WEEE Direc
-
tive. Sims Group developed new
technology to identify and sepa
-
rate the various plastics found in
electronics devices.
the ultimate win
-
ners will no doubt be global re
-
cycling giants like Sims, GEEP,
and ARC. With their ability to
industrialize the process, and to
squeeze every last piece of pre
-
cious metal out of e-waste, they
will ultimately put the backyard
recyclers out of business
(repost thx Ustmel)
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