Design and construction of an industrial mobile plant for WEEE treatment: Investigation on the treatment of fluorescent powders and economic evaluation compared to other e-wastes

Abstract

Abstract The main objective of this manuscript is the description of a mobile demonstration plant designed and built for the recovery of metals from waste of electrical and electronic equipment and other waste such as spent batteries and exhausted industrial catalysts. The plant was designed within the European FP7 framework HydroWEEE-demo (2012–2016) and can offer an effective proposal to addressing the problem of the electronic waste, reducing the environmental impact of their not correct disposal, recovering critical materials as rare earths and precious elements, and giving economic benefits, moreover by it, it is possible to overcome the problem of moving hazardous wastes from one country to another one. Details about the process to recover rare earths from fluorescent materials are presented. Two alternative treatments are showed with and without recirculation of the residual solutions. Economic analysis shows that with the actual product price (14 €/kg) only the process, in which solution recirculation is present, provides a return on the investment. Positive gain is possible if the plant works at its highest capacity and if the price growths up to 20 €/kg the gain increases about 20% of operating costs (process with recirculation, 2 batch/day). In the process without recirculation of the solution, to obtain the same ratio between gain and operating cost it is necessary that the price increases up to 26 €/kg. About other e-wastes, economic analysis has shown that the highest gain is provided from the PCB treatment.