Environment Gets Polluted by E-waste-Electronic Recycling
With the emergence of new electronic devices and break down of older devices, the old electronic items become trash. This electronic waste is called as e-trash or e-scrap. As we know these useful electronic goods are made up of valuable materials like tin, copper, aluminium, iron, gold, fossil fuels, plastic, metal, glass and silver. As a result, with the crashing down of these electronic equipments, these substances add up in the environment. The environment gets polluted by e-waste.
Here, comes the most significant process called Electronics Recycling through which the electronics raw materials are recovered from the old devices. Thus, Electronics Recycling supports in having a green and safe future.
Electronic Recycling: Commonly Replaced Electronics
By the process of Electronic Recycling, the most common electronics that replaced often are computers, laptops, television sets, mobile phones, printers etc.
Electronic Recycling: Its Benefits
1. Rich Source of Raw Materials
E-waste is a rich source of raw materials such as gold, tin, copper, aluminium etc.
2. Solid Waste Management
Because of the growth in the electronics industry along with short product life cycle has led to a rapid increase in the generation of solid waste and Electronic Recycling helps in managing this solid waste.
Old electronic devices contain toxic substances such as lead, mercury, cadmium and chromium and chemical flame retardants. The Electronic Recycling processing ensures that these materials are not released into the environment.
Electronic Recycling: Process of Electronic Recycling
The main steps involved in the process of Electronic Recycling are:
The first step involved in Electronic Recycling is the sorting of e-waste items manually when the items arrive at the recycling plants.
2. Recovering Core Materials
In the second step, the e-waste items are taken apart to recover core materials and components and are then separated into various categories so that can be re-used in the recycling processes.
3. Initial Reduction Process
Items that cannot be dismantled efficiently are shredded together with the other dismantled components to pieces less than 2 inches in diameter in the initial reduction process. It is done to further categorize the finer e-waste pieces.
4. Succeeding Reduction Process
The finer e-waste particles are then evenly spread out by means of an automated shaking process on a conveyor belt in this reduction stage to break down further. Consequently, if there is any dust, it is extracted and discarded in a manner that does not degrade the environment.
5. Utilization of Over-Band Magnet
In this step, an over-band magnet is utilized to remove all the magnetic materials including steel and iron from the e-waste debris.
6. Non-Metallic and Metallic Parts Separation
The metals and non-metallic components are separated in this step. Copper, aluminium, and brass are extracted from the debris to only leave behind non-metallic materials. These metals are either put up for sale as raw materials or re-used for new-fangled manufacture.
7. Water Separation is the Final Step
In the last step, plastic is separated from glass by use of water. Once separated, the substance recovered can then be re-sold as raw materials for re-use. The products sold consist of plastic, glass, copper, steel, shredded circuit boards, iron and valuable metal mix.