Abstract
The demand for rare earths (RE) has been intensified by their large use, especially in high technology sectors. Supply difficulties have forced RE users to seek alternative sources and invest in the development of recycling technologies and options of reuse for these elements. This article seeks to reveal the trends and ongoing changes in national and global prospects of RE. Additionally, it aims to analyze scientific collaboration networks in the area of industrial solid waste (ISW) and waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) exploitation in Brazil, examining both researchers and institutions with greater representation in the field. For this purpose, social network analysis methods were used to build and analyze co-authorship networks based on scientific publications retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) database. The results showed that the Brazilian collaboration network of ISW research was extremely fragmented and contained 105 different groups, which were not connected to each other. The institutional network of ISW research was composed of 125 institutions, 75.2% of them from Brazil. The Brazilian collaboration network of research in WEEE was small (37 researchers), but fragmented: researchers were divided into eight different groups that do not connect to each other. The institutional network of research in WEEE was composed by 12 institutions, nine of them from Brazil. Therefore, this article presents a network collaboration model to bring together actors involved in the management of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), emphasizing the potential for recovery of RE from these wastes, with the purpose of developing products and services.
Highlights
The fastest growing industrial segment, in terms of waste generation and negative environmental impact, is the electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) sector (Unep, 2012; Leal et al, 2013)
This could threaten the most important industries established in Japan, United States and Europe, and military applications that depended on the use of rare earth elements (REE) (Cgee, 2013)
The Brazilian collaboration network of industrial solid waste (ISW) research was composed of 627 researchers, 95.5% of them affiliated to Brazilian institutions
Summary
The fastest growing industrial segment, in terms of waste generation and negative environmental impact, is the electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) sector (Unep, 2012; Leal et al, 2013). It is unacceptable that a large proportion of special and precious metals, including RE found in WEEE, still get lost in the recycling process (Hagelüken, 2005; Hagelüken, 2006; Chancerel et al, 2009) In this context, it is important to consider that engaging in collaborative networks is an essential facilitator of innovation processes in science and technology (S&T) organizations, for both academia and industry. The competences and capabilities that are necessary to transform a scientific discovery into a product are distributed among various organizations (Powell 2002) and there is an increasing demand for interfunctional and inter-institutional cooperation, in areas with a high-tech content (Ramesh & Tiwana 1999), such as the health sector (Fonseca & Fonseca, 2016) and reuse of WEEE and industrial solid waste (ISW) (Campos, 2015). A particular emphasis will be given to the potential for RE recovery from these residues, with the purpose of developing products and services
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