5.9 Industrial Applications of E-Waste Recycling
153
Table 5.2
Examples of industrial e-waste recycling plants around the world [21]
Industrial process
Location Feed materials
Metals recovered
Annual
treatment/production
Other products
Process features
Umicore
Belgium Wastes from the
non-ferrous industry,
PM residues, and
PCBs
Au, Ag, Pd, Pt, Se, Ir,
Ru, Rh, Cu, Ni, Pb, In,
Bi, Sn, As, Sb
Over 50 tons of PGMs,
100 tons of gold and
2400 tons of silver
Sulfuric acid, Slag
(used as construction
material)
Isasmelt smelting,
copper leaching and
electrowinning and
PMs refinery
Boliden
Sweden
Scrap from
non-ferrous and
electronic industry
Cu, Ag, Au, Pd, Ni, Se,
Zn, Pb
Annually recycling
more than 100,000
tons of waste
Sulfuric acid and
SO
2 gas
Smelting in Kaldo
reactor, upgrading in
copper and followed
by refining, high PMs
recovery
Noranda
Canada
e-waste and mined
copper concentrates
Cu, Au, Ag, Pt, Pd, Se,
Te, Ni
Annually recycling
more than 100,000
tons of e-waste
N/A
Upgrading in
converter and anode
furnaces.
Electrorefining for
metal recovery
Dowa Metals and
Mining
Japan
Zinc and copper
concentrates
Cu, Au, Ag
Tizapa mine: Annual
production of 15
million tonnes of zinc,
lead and copper.
Gibraltar mine:
250,000 tonnes of
copper
N/A
E-waste TSL smelting
in secondary copper
process
LS-Nikko’s recycling
facility
Korea
copper scrap from
electrics, electronics
and semiconductor
industries
Au, Ag and PGMs
metals
17,600 tons of copper
(gold, silver included)
9,000 tons of plaster,
1,700 KW of
electricity per hour
Recycling in TSL
smelting followed by
electrolytic refining
(continued)