1. Towards minimization of secondary wastes: Element recycling to achieve future complete resource recycling of electronic wastes
- Author
-
Zhenming Xu and Lingen Zhang
- Subjects
Waste management ,Process (engineering) ,020209 energy ,02 engineering and technology ,010501 environmental sciences ,Reuse ,01 natural sciences ,Electronic Waste ,Waste generation ,Resource (project management) ,Metals ,Hardware_GENERAL ,0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering ,Environmental science ,Production (economics) ,Recycling ,Waste recycling ,Minification ,Element (criminal law) ,Waste Management and Disposal ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences - Abstract
Recycling resources from millions of tons of e-wastes are a global challenge. E-wastes is complex and contains both toxic organics and valuable metals. Therefore, the technologies for e-wastes recycling are totally different from those used for mineral separation. Current technologies for e-wastes tend to focus on recycling materials with high economic value and ignore components that cannot be recycled or have low reuse value. As a result, some secondary pollution problems inevitably occur due to the recycling process. Based on these problems, we summarize the universal characteristics of e-wastes and explore new approaches to achieve complete resource recycling of e-wastes with minimum secondary waste generation. A concept of element recycling is proposed to achieve complete resource recycling of e-wastes in the study. We can use the properties of the elements in different types of e-wastes to achieve e-wastes recycling, i.e., recycle of elements in e-wastes. Under the guidance of element recycling, various e-wastes types have common connections. If element recycling in e-wastes is realized, all components in e-wastes can be fully recycled without/with minimal production of secondary waste. The two case studies are discussed to clarify the concept and principle of element recycling. This study explores the recycling of e-wastes from a new perspective-element recycling in e-wastes. The concept of element recycling is significant for resource recycling from e-wastes.
- Published
- 2019