An Empirical Approach for More Effective Recycling of Electronic Components in WEEE

Although the recovery of valuable material contained inside electronic waste is an attractive aim for companies, but the recycling process is rather complicated because of the heterogeneous composition of this waste. In particular the recovery of rare earth elements (REEs) requires sophisticated chemical processes, which are uneconomical due to low concentration of REEs in the waste. To optimize the recycling of these resources a higher concentration of REEs in the compound, which is chemically processed, is necessary. One possibility achieve this is by automated separation of the components with a decent fraction of REEs from the material flow prior to chemical processing.
This paper presents a holistic approach for automated detection and extraction of valuable electronic components