Urban mining to reduce environmental footprint of consumer goods

said braka 6:49 AM
In the EU, many raw  needed in industry, from

car making to , are imported from abroad as they aren't available locally. Several of the components of computers and mobile phones, for example, are typically obtained from China. And the demand for these items is increasing as people upgrade to newer models every few years.
At the same time, though, people are getting rid of electronics just as fast. 'If we could make new ones out of the old ones, it's a way of putting these materials back to use,' said Dr. Cord Fricke-Begemann from the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT in Aachen, Germany.
Some electronics are recycled in Europe but the process is crude. It involves melting devices together in a furnace and focuses on removing the most valuable metals, typically copper, silver and gold.
Dr. Fricke-Begemann and his colleagues want to give more raw materials a second life. As part of the ADIR project, they are looking at ways of automatically disassembling electronic devices such as mobile phones, which is currently a stumbling block for recovering many of their parts.
'There are hundreds of different types of mobile phones so we need a device that is flexible and can handle all of them,' said Dr. Fricke-Begemann.


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-02-urban-environmental-footprint-consumer-goods.html#jCp