Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College, UK.
Fraunhofer Research Institution for Materials Recycling and Resource Strategies IWKS, Germany.
Waste Manag Res. 2022 Jan;40(1):54-65. doi: 10.1177/0734242X20987895. Epub 2021 Feb 15.
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.
修订立法和禁止将废旧电气电子设备 (WEEE) 进口到许多亚洲国家进行处理，这促使欧洲需要更有效地对 WEEE 进行分类，扩大处理厂的容量并提高有经济价值的材料的回收率。从主要利益相关者调查和协商中收集的数据与详细文献调查的结果相结合，为多标准决策分析计算提供加权矩阵输入，以执行以下任务：(a) 根据 6 项行业内经济潜在标准（即提高产品质量、提高回收率、提高工艺能力、降低劳动力成本、降低能源成本和降低处置成本），评估 12 种工艺方案的相对重要性；(b) 对 25 种已被选为最有可能有助于有效分类 WEEE 的关键技术进行排名。结果表明，要开发任何从 WEEE 中实现最大材料经济回收的系统，第一阶段必须是选择和应用适当的分类工艺技术，将关键金属等有价值的组件浓缩到尽可能小的部分，以实现其回收，同时将低价值产品的处置成本降至最低。基于利益相关者的研究确定了高效 WEEE 分类的可行技术工艺发展的优先级，并强调了在处理 WEEE 方面必须做出的经济和技术改进。
