Month: February 2014

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

We’ve all heard it, many of us even practice this mantra. But did you know that these three words are a part of a well thought out waste disposal hierarchy?

Most effective

Reducing is by far the most effective way to cut waste, and therefore it is at the top of the hierarchy. If you reduce the amount of what you consume, you help conserve precious resources and limit the waste you create.

That means doing more with less and putting real thought into what you need versus what you want. Start with something simple like walking to work or school instead of driving or installing an inexpensive water displacement system in your toilets to reduce water usage.

Reuse is pretty self-explanatory. Before you recycle, think about how you can use an item over again, or perhaps several times — think water bottles, plastic food containers, etc. The more we can reuse items, or purchase items meant to be reused like cloth grocery bags and rechargeable batteries, the less reprocessing of these materials will need to occur.

There is also the notion of re-purposing to consider as well. While reusing means to use an item over again in its original form, re-purposing takes an item used for one purpose and uses it another way like turning a pickle jar into a vase for flowers, for example.

Then comes recycling

Recycling takes time and energy to process materials, which is why it’s not at the top of the hierarchy. But that is not to say that recycling isn’t good. So keep filling up those bins you have at home and at work.

If you have an item that had been truly used and needs to be disposed of, find out if it can be recycled. Remember recycling also means buying products that are made from recycled materials, using them to their fullest extent and then returning them to be recycled again.

And the hierarchy goes even deeper.

If you really want to help conserve our natural resources, consider other steps in the hierarchy like composting. Composting is Nature’s way of recycling.

At the bottom of the list are additional steps including waste-to-energy and land disposal, however those steps are usually conducted by a municipality or county.

Written by
Mark Walter
Business Development Manager

Rare earth metals are important components in green energy products such as wind turbines and eco-cars. But the scarcity of these metals is worrying the EU.

The demand for metals such as neodymium (Nd) and dysprosium (Dy) is increasing much faster than production. These metals are used in technologies such as the generators that store power in wind turbines, and the electric motors that propel electric and hybrid cars. But they are also used in everyday products like computers and mobile phones.

Rare earth metals do occur in the earth’s crust, but not in sufficiently high concentrations. This is why only one country – China – has so far been supplying the entire world with these elements. However, in recent years, China has begun to restrict its export of these materials.

Forecasts show that as early as next year, these metals will be hard to come by.

Clean Material

This explains why the recycling of rare earth metals from scrap is fast becoming an important research topic. Seven major European research institutes (Fraunhofer, CEA, TNO, VTT, SINTEF, Tecnalia and SP) have joined forces to invest in a joint programme (Value from Waste) aimed at tackling this important issue.

“The aim is to extract valuable materials from the waste streams. The challenges lie in the fact that the material must be sufficiently clean in order to be recycled, and we have to be sure that it is not contaminated by other harmful materials”, explains Odd Løvhaugen of SINTEF ICT.

Researchers are therefore focusing much of their work on finding out which products could contain pollutants, which methods are best for analysing and measuring the content of the polluted materials, and when such products can be expected to be found in waste.

They are also evaluating extraction methods, techniques to recycle nanoparticles in the treatment process, and how the constituents of ash can be analysed after incineration.

Technology from the aluminium and smelting industry

SINTEF is coordinating this major EU programme, which is using two groups of material technologies in the race to find good analytical and extraction methods. The approach chosen by the researchers involves a technology well-known from the aluminium and smelting industry.

In the search for sources of recycling material, many people have been considering permanent magnets. This is the most significant product to contain rare earth metals – measured both in terms of value and volume.

Discarded magnets

On the basis of tests, SINTEF researchers believe that the electrolysis technology used in aluminium plants can be used to recycle magnetic alloys from discarded magnets and scrap material from magnet manufacturers. It will take some time before there are enough scrap eco-cars to be able to recycle their motors, which is why they are turning to the magnet manufacturers for the magnetic alloys.

However, the process is still slow, and there is a lot of work still to be done before the researchers will know whether they will be able to achieve their goal. If they are successful, they will have found a method that is much simpler than alternative processes based on the use of strong acids.

Solutions needed

Several other problems must also be solved for the stages before the electrolysis process. Among other things, we need collection and disassembly methods for used magnets, and the magnets themselves must also be demagnetised locally, since the long-distance transport of intact permanent magnets is prohibited.

“Other challenges include finding methods that can identify and characterise nanoparticles in gases, water and solid materials”, says Odd Løvhaugen. “And we must create a toolbox of methods to evaluate the behaviour of nanoparticles in waste treatment processes”.

Submitted Feb 18, 2014
 http://phys.org/news/2014-02-urgent-recycle-rare-metals.html