A Seminar On E- waste Management and Treatment

By Ila Nigam Final Year student Chemical Engineering Department MSU

e-Waste Definition
e-Waste for short - or Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) - is the term used to describe old, end-of-life or discarded appliances using electricity. It includes computers, consumer electronics, fridges etc which have been disposed of by their original users.

Examples:
Computers, LCD / CRT screens, cooling appliances, mobile phones, etc., contain precious metals, flame retarded plastics, CFC foams and many other substances.

Toxic constituents in e-waste

COMPONENTS

CONSTITUENTS

Printed circuit boards

Cathode ray tubes (CRTs) Switches & flat screen monitors Computer batteries

Lead & cadmium

Lead oxide & Cadmium Mercury Cadmium

Capacitors and transformers

Printed circuit boards, plastic Cable insulation/coating

Poly Chlorinated Bi-phenyls (PCB)

Brominated Flame Retardant casings cable Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC)

Hazards associated with E-waste e-waste Components Process Potential Occupational Hazard Potential Environmental Hazard
Lead, Barium and other heavy metals leaching into groundwater, release of toxic phosphor. Air emission of Same substances.

Cathode ray tubes (CRTs)Breaking and removal of Inhalation or contact with copper yoke and dumping. phosphor containing cadmium or other metals. Printed circuit Disordering and removing Tin and lead boards computer chips. Inhalation.

Chips and other gold plated Components.

Chemical stripping using nitric and hydrochloric acid along river banks

Possible brominated dioxin, beryllium, cadmium, mercury Inhalation. Acid contact with eyes, Hydrocarbons, skin may result in heavy metals, brominated permanent injury. substances, etc., discharged directly into river and banks. acids, chlorine and Acidifies the river destroying sulphur dioxide gases fish and flora. can cause respiratory irritation to severe effects including pulmonary edema, circulatory failure and death.

Plastics from Computer and peripherals e.g. printers keyboards, etc. Miscellaneous Open burning to recover computer parts steel and other metals. encased in rubber or plastic e.g. steel rollers Secondary steel or copper and precious metal smelting Furnace recovers steel or copper from waste including organics

Emissions of Brominated dioxins and heavy metals and hydrocarbons.

Hydrocarbon including PAHs and potential dioxin exposure.

Exposure to dioxins and heavy metals.

Hydrocarbon ashes including PAHs discharged to air, water and soil. Emission of dioxins and heavy metals.

WEEE/E-waste Life Cycle

Conceptual life cycle of electrical and electronic equipment is shown in figure.

Conceptual Life Cycle of Electrical and Electronic Equipment

WEEE/E-waste Management
The material flow model define the three major components of WEEE/ E-waste management systems: 1. WEEE/E-waste collection, sorting and transportation system 2. WEEE/E-waste treatment system 3. WEEE/E-waste disposal system.

(a) Landfilling: It is one of the most widely used methods for disposal of e-waste. In landfilling, trenches are made on the flat surfaces. Soil is excavated from the trenches and waste material is buried in it, which is covered by a thick layer of soil. Modern techniques like secure landfill are provided with some facilities like, impervious liner made up of plastic or clay, leachate collection basin that collects and transfer the leachate to wastewater treatment plant. The degradation processes in landfills are very complicated and run over a wide time span.

E-waste Treatment & Disposal Methods

(b) Incineration:
It is a controlled and complete combustion process, in which the waste material is burned in specially designed incinerators at a high temperature (900-1000oC). Advantage of incineration of e-waste is the reduction of waste volume and the Utilization of the energy content of combustible materials. Disadvantage of incineration are the emission to air of substances escaping flue gas cleaning and the large amount of residues from gas cleaning and combustion. e-waste incineration plants contribute significantly to the annual emissions of cadmium and mercury. In addition, heavy metals not emitted into the atmosphere are transferred to slag and exhaust gas residues and can reenter the environment on disposal. Therefore, e-waste incineration will increase these emissions, if no reduction measures like removal of heavy metals are taken.

(c) Recycling of e-waste:

Monitors & CRT, keyboards, laptops, modems, telephone boards, hard drives, floppy drives, Compact disks, mobiles, fax machines, printers, CPUs, memory chips, connecting wires & cables can be recycled. Recycling involves dismantling i.e. removal of different parts of e-waste containing dangerous substances like PCB, Hg, separation of plastic, removal of CRT, segregation of ferrous and non-ferrous metals and printed circuit boards. Recyclers use strong acids to remove precious metals such as copper, lead, gold. The value of recycling from the element could be much higher if appropriate technologies is used. Therefore recycling is the best possible option for the management of e-waste

(d) Re-use:

It constitutes direct second hand use or use after slight modifications to the original functioning equipment. It is commonly used for electronic equipments like computers, cell phones etc. Inkjet cartridge is also used after refilling. This method also reduces the volume of e-waste generation. We can use above mentioned methods for treatment and disposal of e-waste. The better option is to avoid its generation. processes. This can considerably reduce the volume of e- waste generation.

Simplified flow diagram for the recycling of WEEE/E-waste

Treatment system is used at three levels:

1. 2. 3. First level treatment Second level treatment Third level treatment

All the three levels of WEEE/ E-waste treatment systems are based on material flow. The material flows from first level to third level treatment. Each level treatment consists of unit operations, where E-waste is treated and output of first level treatment serves as input to second level treatment. After the third level treatment, the residues are disposed of either in hazardous waste landfill or incinerated.

First Level WEEE/E-waste Treatment

Input:
E-waste items like TV, refrigerator and Personal Computers (PC) Unit Operations: Following three unit operations occur at first level of treatment 1. Removal of all liquids and Gases 2. Dismantling (manual) 3. Segregation All the three unit operations are dry processes, which do not require use of water. The first step is to decontaminate E-waste and render it non-hazardous. This involves removal of all types of liquids and gases (if any) under negative pressure, and their recovery and storage. Further, all other hazardous WEEE/ E-waste residues are dismantled and segregated. These segregated hazardous WEEE/ E-waste fractions are then sent for third level treatment. Output: 1. Segregated hazardous wastes like CFC, Mercury (Hg) Switches, CRT, batteries and capacitors 2. Decontaminated E-waste consisting of segregated non-hazardous E-waste like plastic, circuit board and cables

Second Level WEEE/ E-waste Treatment

A simplified conceptual flow diagram for second level WEEE/E-waste treatment is given in figure Input, unit operations and outputs are described below.

Simplified Flow Diagram for second Level WEEE/E-waste treatment

Input:
Decontaminated E-waste consisting segregated non hazardous E-waste like plastic, circuit board and cables. Unit Operations: There are three unit operations at second level of E-waste treatment
1. Hammering

2. Shredding 3. Special treatment processes Special treatment processes are given below. 1. CRT treatment consisting of separation of funnels and screen glass. 2. Electromagnetic separation 3. Eddy current separation 4. Density separation using air or water.

Output:
Output from the second level treatment technology is given below. 1. Ferrous metal scrap (secondary raw material) 2. Non ferrous metal scrap mainly copper and aluminum 3. Precious metal scrap mainly silver, gold, palladium 4. Plastic consisting of sorted plastic, plastic with flame retardants and plastic mixture

CRT treatment technology

A simplified conceptual flow diagram for CRT treatment is given in figure. Input, unit operations and outputs are described below.

Process flow diagram for recycling of CRTs

3rd Level WEEE/ E-waste Treatment

Plastic Recycling
There are three different types of plastic recycling options i.e. chemical recycling, mechanical recycling and thermal recycling. All the three processes are shown in figure. In chemical recycling process, waste plastics are used as raw materials for petrochemical processes or as reductant in a metal smelter. In mechanical recycling process, shredding and identification process is used to make new plastic products. In thermal recycling process, plastics are used as alternative fuel.

Metals Recycling
Metals recycling has been described below in terms of lead recycling, copper recycling and precious metals recycling. After sorting of metal fractions at second level WEEE/ E - waste treatment, they are sent to metal recovery facilities. These metal recovery facilities use the following processes to recover metals

Processes flow for secondary lead recovery

Processes flow for secondary lead recovery

Precious metals recovery process

Thank you!