Abstract
Revised legislation and bans on imports of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) into many Asian countries for treatment are driving the need for more efficient WEEE fractionation in Europe by expanding the capacity of treatment plants and improving the percentage recovery of materials of economic value. Data from a key stakeholder survey and consultation are combined with the results of a detailed literature survey to provide weighted matrix input into multi-criteria decision analysis calculations to carry out the following tasks: (a) assess the relative importance of 12 process options against the 6 industry-derived in-process economic potential criteria, that is, increase in product quality, increase in recycling rate, increase in process capacity, decrease in labour costs, decrease in energy costs and decrease in disposal costs; and (b) rank 25 key technologies that have been selected as being the most likely to benefit the efficient sorting of WEEE. The results indicate that the first stage in the development of any total system to achieve maximum economic recovery of materials from WEEE has to be the selection and application of appropriate fractionation process technologies to concentrate valuable components such as critical metals into the smallest possible fractions to achieve their recovery while minimising the disposal costs of low-value products. The stakeholder-based study has determined the priority for viable technical process developments for efficient WEEE fractionation and highlighted the economic and technical improvements that have to be made in the treatment of WEEE.
Highlights
Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is a large and increasingly diverse type of waste with an estimated global yield of approximately 45 million tonnes per annum (Baldé et al, 2017)
The development of an effective recycling methodology for WEEE has to take into account (a) the requirement to separate the waste into fractions such as plastics, metals and other components that have different economic values in terms of their recyclable content, (b) the fact that the composition of WEEE has changed over the years because of manufacturing and technical changes, including an increase in the amount and number of different plastics used, a reduction in the precious metal content of electronic components, the increasing trend towards miniaturisation and the increased use of embedded batteries, all of which present challenges for recovery and recycling (Tansel, 2017) and (c) any current and future relevant waste legislation
The literature review and stakeholder consultation survey identified a set of 12 key process options and a set of 25 technologies (Table 3) that were most likely to benefit the key process options required for optimal fractionation of WEEE
Summary
Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is a large and increasingly diverse type of waste with an estimated global yield of approximately 45 million tonnes per annum (Baldé et al, 2017). The economics of recovery of value from WEEE in the EEA (Magalini and Huisman, 2018) have been affected by recent legislative changes including (a) the 2018 open scope expansion of the 2012 Directive (European Commission, 2012) that could endanger the achievement of the minimum goals for recycling and (b) the ban on import of waste plastics by Asian countries including China, India, Malaysia and Vietnam that will remove a major market outlet for all recovered plastics including those from WEEE (Malaysian National News Agency Bernama, 2018; Messenger, 2018; Minh, 2018; PRC Ministry of Ecology and Environment, 2017; Press Information Bureau Delhi, 2019; Vietnam Environment Administration, 2018). These definition changes and the restriction of export markets for recovered plastics should, incentivise new investment into the recovery of value from WEEE within the EEA
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