Characterising and evaluating waste electrical and electronic equipment as a source of scarce metals - a geological and primary production perspective

Abstract

The global consumption of metals is increasing sharply, simultaneously with a loss of scarce metals. To reduce these losses, the causative processes must be understood. Therefore, a knowledge base on secondary resources and the potential for the mining of secondary material deposits needs to be developed. In this study, a framework connecting geological and primary production understanding with the material life cycle was developed. Subsequently, analogies were derived on concentration and dilution relationships after the use phase. Additionally, the "geological" setting of secondary material deposits was determined for three waste electrical and electronic equipment cases in Switzerland. This allowed a better understanding of the mining potentials in the recycling and disposal phase of an EoL product. The resulting "geological" setting demonstrated secondary material deposits of scarce metals to have higher concentrations and their mine-life to last longer than in a mined primary material deposit. The study revealed that extracting secondary material resources is likely to become energetically, economically, environmentally, more viable

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ORCID for I.D. Williams: orcid.org/0000-0002-0121-1219

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