Recycling is definitely one area of engineering that is under appreciated and difficult.
The tech involved in recycling solar panels. Sheesh. Specialized equipment and patented processes. All to separate polymers from the metals and minerals. It’s currently more expensive than mining new material. The challenge will be to make it affordable enough that it makes sense.
But general electronic waste? I can’t even imagine. It sucks that instead of answering the challenge the world is collectively shrugging and dumping it in places like Ghana.
Update: Part of the recycling equation is not only designing electronics to be repaired and re-used but also designing them to be easier to recycle. In the solar panel field there are experimental designs that give new panels the same durability and life expectancy without the polymers which would reduce the cost of recycling them at end-of-life quite significantly.
Computing is... going in a different direction. Optimizing density at the component level makes for more power-efficient designs and some efficiency in the supply chain... but it makes recycling and repair waaaaaaaay harder. Not sure it's worth the effort tbh.
It is for the gold. So much that in the UK we had our Royal Mint start
a proper industrial pipeline for e-waste [0].
What I found heartbreaking from the stories from India, China and
Africa is that mainly kids of about 8 - 16 yo work on illegal
recycling.
They smash up the e-waste by hand, so they're breathing in dust clouds
of plastic and metal particles, PFAS, glass fragments, PCB... Then
they wash out the recoverables using a light aqua-regia (mix of nitric
and hydrochloric acid). The industrial health effects are
unimaginable.
EDIT: Just saw your update and concur that design-for-RRR is the way
forward.
The tech involved in recycling solar panels. Sheesh. Specialized equipment and patented processes. All to separate polymers from the metals and minerals. It’s currently more expensive than mining new material. The challenge will be to make it affordable enough that it makes sense.
But general electronic waste? I can’t even imagine. It sucks that instead of answering the challenge the world is collectively shrugging and dumping it in places like Ghana.
Update: Part of the recycling equation is not only designing electronics to be repaired and re-used but also designing them to be easier to recycle. In the solar panel field there are experimental designs that give new panels the same durability and life expectancy without the polymers which would reduce the cost of recycling them at end-of-life quite significantly.
Computing is... going in a different direction. Optimizing density at the component level makes for more power-efficient designs and some efficiency in the supply chain... but it makes recycling and repair waaaaaaaay harder. Not sure it's worth the effort tbh.