Next generation urban mining – Automated disassembly, separation and recovery of valuable materials

R. Noll, R. Ambrosch, K. Bergmann, S. Britten, H. Brumm, A. Chmielarz, S. Connemann, M. Eschen, A. Frank, C. Fricke-Begemann, C. Gehlen, T. Gorewoda, M. Guolo, W. Kurylak, J. Makowe, G. Sellin, M. Siguier, A. Tori, F. Veglia

An overview will be presented on current R&D activities of the European project ADIR – running since 9/2015 – dealing with the automated disassembly, separation and recovery of valuable materials from electronic equipment. Main focus are end-of-life cell phones and printed circuit boards from server and network electronics. To date the material specific recycling is focused on mass stream concepts such as shredder processes and metallurgy to extract the high-value metallic constituents, i.e. copper, gold and silver. However, a series of critical elements cannot be recovered efficiently or is even lost in dust or residual fractions. The goal of ADIR is to demonstrate the feasibility of a key technology for next generation urban mining in the scope of reverse production concepts. An automated disassembly of electronic equipment is worked out to separate and recover valuable materials. The concept is based on image processing, robotic handling, pulsed power technology, 3D laser measurement, real-time laser material identification (to detect materials by laser spectroscopy), laser processing (to selectively unsolder these; to cut off parts of a printed circuit board), and automatic separation into different sorting fractions. A data base is built up providing comprehensive information about physical and chemical features of the items to be treated. A machine concept was worked out being capable to selectively disassemble printed circuit boards and cell phones with short cycle times to gain sorting fractions containing high amounts of valuable materials. Examples are those materials with high economic importance and supply risk such as tantalum, tungsten and neodymium. The various processes for the ADIR demonstrator have been developed recently and will now be implemented in a set of interlinked machines to validate the novel process chain for reverse production. The current state of development will be highlighted.

Next generation urban mining – Automated disassembly, separation and recovery of valuable materials from electronic equipment: overview of R&D approaches and first results of the European project ADIR