Disassembling the dilemmas

The world’s largest information technology (IT) company by revenue, Apple Inc., says it collected nearly 90 million pounds of electronic scrap through recycling programs in 2015. In addition to free e-scrap recycling in 19 states, the electronics leader offers the Apple Renew program, which recycles old devices for free.

In March 2016, Apple debuted its latest device, a move some in the industry say is a look into the future of e-scrap recycling and the metals that can be recovered from these devices, especially as they get smaller. Liam is a line of robots designed in-house that can dismantle 1.2 million phones per year, Apple says on www.apple.com/environment. Liam, with its 29 arms, deconstructs phones, removing parts and precious metals: gold and copper are extracted from the cameras; silver and platinum are separated from the main logic boards; and cobalt and lithium are removed from the batteries.

The technology sector acknowledges precious metals are just that—scarce resources. Apple recognizes this in a video demonstrating Liam’s capabilities. The voice-over cites the value in recovering precious metals from old devices, saying, “ … so the materials in your iPhone can live on; because in a world with limited resources, some things can’t be replaced.”

As Apple and other electronics manufacturers continue to create smaller devices, they are considering how best to recover the precious metals inside. Recyclers across the globe also have been figuring out this same puzzle.

The devices are definitely smaller. Likewise, less precious metals, especially gold, are contained within. However, innovations and investments, recyclers say, have helped them to get the most value out of the e-scrap they handle.

For some recyclers, overall incoming volumes have declined, yet the precious metals used have remained consistent. “Smaller [circuit] boards … certainly reduce precious metals content per unit, but the metals themselves have remained the same,” says Bill Rockett, vice president of M&K Recovery Group, North Andover, Massachusetts. The company is certified to the R2 (Responsible Recycling) Standard and provides electronics recycling, precious metals refining, reverse logistics, IT asset and e-scrap disposition, remarketing and data destruction services.

PARTICULAR PROCESSING

Hunter Scott, vice president of scrap purchasing at Dynamic Recycling, based in Onalaska, Wisconsin, says the increasing miniaturization of devices will “force recyclers to become a lot more creative.” He says that with the downsizing of electronics, he has seen a decline in the amount of gold and palladium used within devices and an increase in the use of less valuable precious metals, such as tantalum. This affects the value of circuit boards, with 80 percent of their value ultimately dependent on gold, Scott says.

“The total precious metals per pound in electronic scrap is dropping, no doubt,” says Dynamic Recycling CEO Miles Harter.

Dynamic Recycling is a full-service ITAD, electronics recycling, scrap purchasing and data security company. In addition to its Wisconsin headquarters, Dynamic operates a Nashville, Tennessee, location. (The company is profiled in the April 2013 issue of Recycling Today, available at www.RecyclingToday.com/article/rt0413- dynamic-recycling-electronics.)

Scott predicts manual disassembly of e-scrap will become a thing of the past as mechanical disassembly becomes more widely implemented. The smaller devices mean internal batteries and other components are more difficult to remove, requiring more attention to detail that, Scott says, will come from technological innovations like Apple’s Liam.

“I see a trend toward more automated disassembly and processing,” Scott says. “The [electronics] manufacturers aren’t making it real feasible for the recyclers to handle that product when it makes its way into the recycling stream. That will prove an obstacle to overcome.”

Recycling technologies will have to change, there’s no doubt about that, says Thierry Van Kerckhoven, global sales manager, recyclables, at the material technology and recycling company Umicore, headquartered in Brussels. However, he says the very fact that devices have become smaller suggests that preprocessing of electronics, i.e., disassembling devices to obtain fractions that can be recycled, has to be adapted. Whether this means more human intervention or more automated and selective mechanical removal remains to be seen, Van Kerckhoven says.

Umicore Precious Metals Refining, a recycling business unit of Umicore based in Hoboken, Belgium, recovers 17 precious and nonferrous metals from industrial residues, used e-scrap and automotive and industrial catalysts. The division collects e-scrap mostly from Europe and North America in the form of printed circuit boards or preprocessed, smaller devices, such as cellphones and laptops.

Regarding lighter circuit boards as a result of smaller devices, Van Kerckhoven says it will prove more difficult to extract precious metals from them. He explains, “The fact that devices have become smaller also means it will become much more difficult to get the precious-metals-bearing parts out of the device. If you had a big desktop computer, then you just remove the screws, and there’s the circuit board.

“Now,” he continues, “If you want to remove the thin circuit boards, it will be much more difficult, which often means people will have to adapt their traditional ways to get to the circuit boards.”

COMPLEX AND COMPETITIVE

Although Colt Refining Inc.’s processes are proprietary, John Cianciarulo, general manager of the company’s Hudson, New Hampshire, recycling facility, says improvements to its mechanical and chemical processes for metals recovery “have been critical to our success in recent years.”

Colt Refining, a fully integrated processor of scrap metal, operates a refining facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire. Colt Recycling’s processing system dismantles e-scrap and other precious-metal-bearing scrap from industrial byproducts generated by manufacturers, off-spec products and proprietary devices that require secure destruction, as well as value recovery. The system’s byproducts are reduced to ½-inch-sized particles. These particles are used as feedstock at various aluminum and copper mills and smelters or at its Merrimack refining operations.

Cianciarulo says Colt’s competitive advantage has been its ability to design, modify and operate complex processing lines to boost the value of the materials recovered from scrap.

“We made significant updates and improvements to our processes over the past several years as metal prices have fallen and metal concentrations of scrap have been trending lower,” Cianciarulo says.

By running several processing lines, Colt has distinct options for metals recovery, he says. The company’s processing lines include manual disassembly, shredding and mechanical separation, incineration, chemical refining and pyrometallurgical recovery. “As the scrap streams evolve, so do the recovery processes,” he states. “We evaluate each scrap type individually and use the appropriate technology to maximize the value recovery.”

It is expensive to process e-scrap domestically and transparently, Cianciarulo says. “From a processing standpoint, systems and equipment require continuous monitoring, improvement and maintenance. In general, it is expensive to do things the right way.”

“The [electronics] manufacturers aren’t making it real feasible for the recyclers to handle that product when it makes its way into the recycling stream. That will prove an obstacle to overcome.” – Hunter Scott, Dynamic Recycling

Dynamic’s Harter says, in general, the more material is sorted, the more money recyclers can make. While additional sorting requires more labor, money and inventory, “the less you sort material, the less you get paid. And you have to find that sweet spot.”

Despite recognizing that overcapacity exists in the marketplace related to shredding and processing, Harter confirms that Dynamic Recycling is installing a new shredding line, equipped downstream with eddy currents and optical sorters.

Scott says this is something the company has been after for a long time.

He adds that Dynamic has enough volume to “make money on this equipment.”

However, Scott continues, “We’re forced to work with a lot of our competitors because they have shredding systems in place.

“We already have the end users,” he adds. “It makes a lot of sense to cut out the middle man.”

Rockett says M&K Recovery Group has not modified its processing; as the saying goes: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

He adds, “To maximize reclaim value, our separation of materials has traditionally been extensive, so there has been no alteration of those practices.”

In the past six months, Rockett says M&K Recovery has seen increased opportunities related to refurbishing and harvesting components as commodity prices have drifted downward.

CHANGING CONCENTRATIONS

For recycling companies that have invested in their processing lines and have attempted to keep up with the changing e-scrap stream, they have realized more technology is being packed into devices that continue to get smaller, Cianciarulo says. Modern manufacturing techniques and product designs have reduced the concentration of precious metals used in electronic devices, he says. “Lower precious metal content translates to a lower dollar value per pound of scrap.”

Van Kerckhoven points to the convergence of devices in smartphones as one factor for declining volumes of e-scrap. With cellphones that also serve as calculators, cameras, computers and flashlights, as well as serving many other functions, “less weight is having an impact,” he says.

The composition of e-scrap also has changed. In 1999, when Van Kerckhoven says he joined Umicore, the precious metal concentration in a computer’s motherboard was 200 to 225 parts per million (ppm). Today, the average is 125 ppm, he says. “We know that in the newer computers that the motherboard often only has per ton 70 ppm of gold,” Van Kerckhoven adds.

Fortunately for recyclers, in early May 2016, according to the World Gold Council’s Gold Demand Trends report, global gold demand reached 1,290 tons in the first quarter of 2016, a 21 percent increase compared with the same period last year. This is the second largest quarter on record.

Scott says unlike most commodities that recyclers handle, “it has been an OK year so far for gold.” It should continue to be an OK year for Dynamic, too, as the company welcomes its new shredding line. And despite seeing less precious metals overall in e-scrap streams, Scott says the company is well-prepared.

“There’s a future in electronics recycling,” Van Kerckhoven states. What that future means for the size of electronics and the precious metals contained within, time will tell.

The author is associate editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted via email at mworkman@gie.net.