Trial Host: RecyclingBoerse

Trial Partners: Hamburg University of Technology, Fraunhofer Institute

Target Products: display equipment, ICT, consumer electronics, small household appliances

Target CRMs: Tantalum, Neodymium

Project Link 

 

Collection Activity 1 – Re-use Olympics in Schools

When: May 2017 – Jul 2017

Where: Herford (Germany)

What: Collection days in schools with a competition of which school can collect the most items for re-use. Items are assessed for re-use by RecyclingBoerse with non-re-usable items being disassembled for the recovery trials.

 

Collection Activity 2 – Monthly kerbside sack collections from households

When: Mar 2017 – Dec 2017

Where: Herford (Germany)

What: Each household receives a sack which, once filled with WEEE, can be placed at the kerbside for a monthly collection.

 

Collection Activity 3 – Re-use boxes for households and businesses

When: May 2017 – Oct 2017

Where: Herford (Germany)

What: Householders and businesses can request a box for collection of WEEE. These boxes are returned to the RecyclingBoerse depot, shops or collection points. For households, this is an alternative method of collection compared to the kerbside sack.

 

 

Recovery Activity 1 – biological extraction of tantalum

When: Apr 2017 – Dec 2017

Where: Hamburg (Germany)

What: Printed circuit boards are to be broken up by electrohydraulic fragmentation. Use of bio-leaching and biosorption to extract elemental tantalum located within the tantalum capacitors which are extracted from the circuit boards after fragmentation.

 

Recovery Activity 2 – extraction of Neodymium from magnets

When: Apr 2017 – Dec 2017

Where: Hamburg (Germany)

What: Neodymium-containing Magnets will be extracted from hard disk drives. These magnets follow a multi-step process to remove the protective coating and then homogenization by melt-spinning to produce Nd-Fe-B flakes that can be used to create new sintered magnets.