Abstract
Special and precious metals play a key role in modern societies as they are of specific importance for clean technologies and other high-tech equipment. The use of these “technology metals” has accelerated significantly over the past 30 years, and their sufficient future availability is crucial for building a more sustainable society with the help of technology. Recycling can contribute significantly to secure access to these metals, conserve metal resources, and mitigate potential temporary scarcities. If conducted in state-of-the-art processes, recycling of technology metals – which mostly occur in low ore concentrations only – offers as well considerable benefits compared to mining, with respect to energy, land, and water requirements.
While today, very efficient metallurgical processes exist to recover base and precious metals from both primary concentrates and various secondary materials, special metals recovery is usually coupled to the former processes and in many cases still shows potential for improvement. An eco-efficient recycling of technology metals from complex products cannot be achieved without the use of high-tech processes that make use of economies of scale and sophisticated metallurgical flow sheets. The actual achievable recycling rates thereby depend on the setup of the entire recycling chain, from collection and sorting over dismantling/preprocessing down to the final metallurgical metal recovery steps. Decisive factors for the success of such a recycling chain are – in addition to the applied technologies – stakeholder cooperation and the management of interfaces.
The biggest challenge however is to secure that end-of-life products are entering into the most appropriate recycling pathways. Today, a large share of old consumer goods like electronics or cars is – partly illegal – traded across the globe and escapes recycling or ends up in backyard recycling operations with low recovery rates and dramatic impacts on health and environment. This chapter provides an overview on the recycling of technology metals; it elaborates the factors impacting success and shows that legislation can be supportive but that consequent enforcement and new business models are essential to close the loop for consumer products.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The term technology metals is used in this chapter as a synonym for the precious metals (Au, Ag, and the PGMs Pt, Pd, Rh, Ru, Ir) plus the special/specialty metals (among others In, Ga, Ge, rare earth elements, Sb, Se, Si, Te). The latter group is also sometimes called “minor metals,” in distinction from “major” or base metals such as Al, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn.
- 2.
For example, indium recycling gets increasingly more difficult for: target manufacturing → spent ITO target → scrapings from the sputtering chamber → broken or out-of-spec LCD glass → entire out-of-spec or obsolete LCD monitor.
- 3.
One example is PGM loss from car catalysts: In contrast to earlier conditions, today’s autocatalysts under European or American driving conditions emit hardly any PGMs during the use phase. However, under typical “developing country” driving conditions (e.g., bad roads, low car maintenance, misfires, bad petrol quality), a catalyst is likely to be mechanically destroyed, and PGMs with broken catalyst ceramic are blown out from the exhaust and dissipated along the roadside.
- 4.
Examples are tantalum or rare earth elements used in electronic applications. Present only in very low concentrations (e.g., in circuit boards), they dilute even more into the slag. Due to their dispersion/dilution, the additional energy needed to recover and recycle the metal can exceed the energy requirement for virgin extraction.
- 5.
Solving the E-Waste Problem (www.step-initiative.org).
- 6.
At metal price levels, as of Oct. 2009: net value = recovered metals value minus smelting and refining charges, but without consideration of collection, preprocessing, and shipment costs in the preceding recycling chain. Value can vary significantly depending on specific quality/type (especially for autocatalysts).
- 7.
The focus and system limit were the FR Germany. Global conditions for the materials flow of PGM were, however, adequately considered in the study. Areas of investigation include all relevant application segments for PGMs: automotive catalysts; chemical and oil refining catalysts; glass manufacturing; dental applications; electronics; jewelry; electroplating; fuel cells, etc.
- 8.
It is estimated that about 50% of used IT electronics leave Europe one way or another. For mobile phones, less than 5% of the theoretical recycling potential is currently being realized globally in a compliant way. For 2008, monitoring results for ELV in Germany showed that out of 3.2 million deregistered passenger cars, only 420,421 were recycled in Germany, while 1.75 million were exported as “used cars.” A gap of cars addresses mainly unregistered exports. A recycling rate of 89.2% was reported (Umweltbundesamt 2010), but this refers only to the 420,221 cars scrapped in Germany. Calculated on the 3.2 million deregistrations, Germany’s recycling rate would fall to 13.1%. Although 1.5 million of the exported cars go primarily into other (mainly Eastern) EU states, it can be assumed that a big portion will ultimately leave Europe. The export of about 2.6 million cars represents a secondary materials potential of 1.3 million tons of steel, 180,000 t aluminum, about 110,000 t of other nonferrous metals, and about 6.25 t of PGMs. Significant quantities of ELVs are also exported from other European countries (Buchert et al. 2007).
References
Buchert M, Hermann A, Jenseit W, Stahl H, Osyguß B, Hagelüken C (2007) Optimization of precious metals recycling: analysis of exports of used vehicles and electrical and electronic devices at Hamburg port. Federal Environmental Agency of Germany, Dessau
Chancerel P, Meskers CEM, Hagelüken C, Rotter VS (2009) Assessment of precious metal flows during preprocessing of waste electrical and electronic equipment. J Ind Ecol 13(5):791–810
EU COM (2008) 699 The raw materials initiative – meeting our critical needs for growths and jobs in Europe, Brussels, SEC (2008) 2741
Hagelüken C (2006) Recycling of electronic scrap at Umicore’s integrated metals smelter and refinery. World of Metallurgy - Erzmetall 59(3):152–161
Hagelüken C (2007a) Closing the loop – recycling of automotive catalysts. Metallurgy 61(1–2):24–39
Hagelüken C (2007b) The challenge of open cycles. In: Hilty LM, Edelmann X, Ruf A (eds) R’07 world congress – recovery of materials and energy for resource efficiency, Davos, Switzerland, 3–5 Sept 2007
Hagelüken C, Meskers CEM (2008) Mining our computers – opportunities and challenges to recover scarce and valuable metals. In: Reichl H, Nissen N, Müller J, Deubzer O (eds) Proceedings of electronics goes green conference 2008. Fraunhhofer IRB, Stuttgart, pp 585–590
Hagelüken C, Meskers CEM (2010) Complex lifecycles of precious and special metals. In: Graedel, TE, van der Voet E (eds) Linkages of sustainability. Strüngmann Forum Report 4. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 165–197
Hagelüken C, Buchert M, Ryan P (2005) Materials flow of platinum group metals. GFMS, London
Janischewski J, Henzler M, Kahlenborn W (2003) The export of second-hand goods and the transfer of technology: a study commissioned by the German Council for Sustainable Development. Adelpi Research GmbH
Kuper J, Hojsik M (2008) Poisoning the poor: electronic waste in Ghana. Greenpeace International, Amsterdam
McLean HL, Duchin F, Hagelüken C, Halada K, Kesler SE, Moriguchi Y, Mueller D, Norgate TE, Reuter MA, van der Voet E (2010) Mineral resources: stocks, flows, and prospects. In: Graedel, TE, van der Voet E (eds) Linkages of sustainability. Strüngmann Forum Report 4. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 199–218
Meskers CEM, Hagelüken C, Van Damme G (2009a) Green recycling of EEE. In: Howard SM (ed) EPD congress 2009 at the TMS annual meeting, San Francisco, CA
Meskers CEM, Hagelüken C, Salhofer S (2009b) Impact of pre-processing routes on precious metal recovery from PCs. In: Proceedings of EMC 2009, GDMB Medienverlag, Clausthal Zellerfeld
Nokia (2008) Global consumer survey reveals that majority of old mobile phones are lying in drawers at home and not being recycled (press release July 8). Nokia Corporation, Helsinki
Puckett J, Byster L, Westervelt S, Gutierrez R, Davis S, Hussain A, Dutta M (2002) Exporting harm – the high-tech trashing of Asia. Basel Action Network, Seattle
Puckett J, Westervelt S, Takamiya Y, Gutierrez R (2005) The digital dump – exporting re-use and abuse to Africa. Basel Action Network, Seattle
Reuter MA, Boin UMJ, Van Schaik A, Verhoef E, Heiskanen K, Yang Y, Georgalli G (2005) The metrics of material and metal ecology. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 720 pp
Reuter MA, Van Schaik A, Ignatenko O, de Haan GJ (2006) Fundamental limits for the recycling of end-of-life vehicles. Miner Eng 19(5):433–449
Rochat D, Hagelüken C, Keller M, Widmer R (2007) Optimal recycling for printed wiring boards in India. In: Hilty LM, Edelmann X, Ruf A (eds) R’07 world congress – recovery of materials and energy for resource efficiency, Davos, Switzerland, 3–5 Sept 2007
Sepúlveda A, Schluep M, Renaud FG, Streicher M, Kuehr R, Hagelüken C, Gerecke AC (2009) A review of the environmental fate and effects of hazardous substances released from electrical and electronic equipments during recycling: examples from China and India. Environ Impact Assess Rev 30:28–41. doi:10.1016/j.eiar.2009.04.001
Umweltbundesamt (2010) Altfahrzeugaufkommen und -verwertung Accessed 14.1.2012. www.env-it.de/umweltdaten/public/theme.do?nodeIdent=2304
UNEP (2011) Recycling rates of metals – a status report: a report of the Working Group on the Global Metals Flows to the International Resource Panel. Graedel TE, Allwood J, Birat JP, Buchert M, Hagelüken C, Reck BK, Sibley SF, Sonnemann G, 48 pp
Wellmer FW (2008) Reserves and resources of the geosphere, terms so often misunderstood. Is the life index of reserves of natural resources a guide to the future? Z dt Ges Geowiss 159(4):575–590
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hagelüken, C. (2012). Secondary Raw Material Sources for Precious and Special Metals. In: Sinding-Larsen, R., Wellmer, FW. (eds) Non-Renewable Resource Issues. International Year of Planet Earth. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8679-2_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8679-2_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-8678-5
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-8679-2
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)