Recent Advances in Metal Recycling within a Circular Economy

A special issue of Recycling (ISSN 2313-4321).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2020) | Viewed by 7485

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology - Director (Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult.), Freiberg, Germany
Interests: design for recycling and sustainability, process simulation; design and control; process metallurgy; recycling

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The by-products of many metal refineries can potentially be used as resource materials for other production of activities. Increasing focus on ‘circular economy’, closed loop production and industrial symbiosis principles and methods is suggesting a need to consider mining and production waste as potential by-products and secondary resources.

New extractive technologies, increasing resource costs and sustainable production models are all focused on extracting further resources and value from mining and production waste. Furthermore, the potential recycling rates of rare earths and metals will become increasingly important as the supply and resource availability of these resources is limited by their finite supply and geo-political considerations in growing global markets.

This Special Issue of Recycling will consider recent advances in metal recycling and the role of this increasingly important industry in modern sustainability management.

Topics could include:

  • Physical Metal recycling technology
  • Metal recycling techniques
  • Extractive metallurgy (hydro- and pyrometallurgical)
  • Processing of residues from metal processing systems
  • Closed Loop Production of Metals in a Circular Economy (CE)
  • Design for Recycling
  • Rare earth and mineral recycling
  • Metal complex catalysts
  • Recycling of spent Lithium Ion Batteries (LIB)
  • Metal recycling policy and regulation
  • Urban mining
  • Physical separation technologies
  • Simulation-based environmental assessment of metal recycling
  • Sustainability of systems i.e. simulation-based footprinting of metal recycling
  • Exergy analysis
  • Urban mining/collection
  • Digitalization of recycling processes and systems
  • Metal Recycling Policy development
  • Fundamental and big-data simulation approaches
  • Sensor technology

Prof. Dr. Markus Reuter
Prof. Dr. Michele John
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

14 pages, 1829 KiB  
Article
Biodismantling, a Novel Application of Bioleaching in Recycling of Electronic Wastes
by Benjamin Monneron-Enaud, Oliver Wiche and Michael Schlömann
Recycling 2020, 5(3), 22; https://doi.org/10.3390/recycling5030022 - 15 Sep 2020
Cited by 15 | Viewed by 6603
Abstract
Electronic components (EC) from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) such as resistors, capacitors, diodes and integrated circuits are a subassembly of printed circuit boards (PCB). They contain a variety of economically valuable elements e.g., tantalum, palladium, gold, and rare earth elements. However, [...] Read more.
Electronic components (EC) from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) such as resistors, capacitors, diodes and integrated circuits are a subassembly of printed circuit boards (PCB). They contain a variety of economically valuable elements e.g., tantalum, palladium, gold, and rare earth elements. However, until recently there has been no systematic dismantling and recycling of the EC to satisfy the demand for raw materials. A problem connected with the recycling of the EC is the removal of the components (dismantling) in order to recover the elements in later processing steps. The aim of the present study was to develop a new technique of dismantling using bioleaching technology to lower costs and environmental impact. In triplicate batch experiments, used PCBs were treated by bioleaching using an iron-oxidizing mixed culture largely dominated by Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans strains supplemented with 20 mM ferrous iron sulfate at pH 1.8 and 30 °C for 20 days. Abiotic controls were treated by similar conditions in two different variations: 20 mM of Fe2+ and 15 mM of Fe3+. After 20 days, successful dismantling was obtained in both the bioleaching and the Fe3+ control batch. The control with Fe2+ did not show a significant effect. The bioleaching condition presented a lower rate of dismantling which can partially be explained by a constantly higher redox potential leading to a competition of solder leaching and copper leaching from the printed copper wires. The results showed that biodismantling—dismantling using bioleaching—is possible and can be a new unit operation of the recycling process to maximize the recovery of valuable metals from PCBs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Metal Recycling within a Circular Economy)
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