Comprehensive elemental analysis of consumer electronic devices: Rare earth, precious, and critical elements
| Autor: | Inez Hua, Emily Lawson, Natasha M. Ploss, Dylan T. Buechler, Cole A. Spencer, Nadezhda N. Zyaykina |
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| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
Ethernet
business.industry 020209 energy Scrap 02 engineering and technology 010501 environmental sciences Platinum group 01 natural sciences Electronic waste Electronic Waste Printed circuit board Elemental analysis Metals 0202 electrical engineering electronic engineering information engineering Environmental science Metals Rare Earth Recycling Electronics Process engineering business Waste Management and Disposal 0105 earth and related environmental sciences Refining (metallurgy) |
| Zdroj: | Waste management (New York, N.Y.). 103 |
| ISSN: | 1879-2456 |
| Popis: | Over the past few decades, electronic devices of all kinds, and especially consumer electronics, have evolved in function and composition, in parallel to increasing manufacture and use. There is great potential for recovering economic value and reducing environmental impact by recycling devices and extracting various elements. However, there are few studies that comprehensively identify the elemental content of electronic devices or electronic waste. In the present study, consumer electronics and components (hard drives, ethernet hubs, portable media players, printers, answering machines, mobile phones, Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) players, computer wiring, and printed circuit boards) and electronic waste (low-grade scrap from one commercial recycling facility) were analyzed for rare earth, precious and critical metals. The overall procedure included size reduction, microwave assisted digestion, and Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES) analysis. Fifty-six elements were quantified or detected in these devices: 14 rare earth elements, six platinum group metals, 20 critical metals, and 16 other elements, including some precious metals. A single device could include a wide range of elements: 48 metals were quantified in the computer hard drives. The estimated economic value of the metals in each device ranged from $12.94 USD (computer wiring) to $454 USD (hard drives). The variety of metals in electronic devices suggests that end-of-life management strategies should focus on recycling and recovery, which also decreases the overall environmental impacts of the devices, especially associated with mining and refining metals. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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