[in_vestor]

I’ve tried to work on this problem, and it is MUCH more difficult than people realize.

If you are started with a single product (say a lithium ion battery), then you might stand a chance of developing a process that can recover a reasonable fraction of the metals.

But if you’re starting with a general pile of a bunch of stuff (CRTS, batteries, hard drives, PCBs, cables), it’s very difficult to optimize a process that catches even a modest amount of the valuable stuff. The metals are fused with nonmetallic stuff like plastic and ceramics. And the useful metals often end up being “down cycled” into less valuable alloys because they are difficult or uneconomical to separate. If that’s hard to believe, just try to think through how you would economically extract gold, silver, and copper from 100 kg of PCBs.

And the reality is that most ewaste does not come in nicely separated. The options are 1) spend extra money to have people separate stuff, 2) possibly develop AI systems to separate stuff, 3) have consumers separate their own stuff, or 4) develop better chemical processes that can actually handle a mixture.

I have tried to work on #4 with not much success. If anyone else has worked on this and would like to share their experience, drop a note.

Edit: another commenter drew the analogy to ore refining, but that’s not correct. Ores are much more homogenous relative to ewaste. It would be like if PCBS contained copper fused onto plexiglass—sure, then it would be easy to get at the copper. But it’s not just those two things—-it’s 100 things all bound together.

[pstuart]

I've long been curious about plasma gasification for waste handling and your comment prompted me to see if that might be viable and I found: https://news.mit.edu/2021/inentec-turning-trash-into-valuabl...

Further searching on the company name has not been entirely encouraging but maybe I'm doing it wrong. There was a company called Changing World Technologies that I was very excited about that failed to deliver on its promises, so my enthusiasm is quite tempered.

[in_vestor]

Yes! This is one of the ideas I’ve spent time on and am still somewhat curious about.

InEnTec is the leading company in the space (as far as I can tell) because they have good scientific leadership, a good academic pedigree, and an investment by Waste Management.

The technology still has its challenges. It is hard to make it economical relative to alternatives, for one. I also think executives are not driving at the correct business model, overemphasizing syngas production and underemphasizing just getting rid of waste and possibly recovering metals.

But the biggest problem I see in terms of its viability for recycling is that it is all down cycling. Valuable and precious metals all end up in either a hugely challenging mixed alloy, or they get wasted in the vitrified slag output.

I have been trying to find someone who can clarify if any progress has been made on this.

[pstuart]

The website seems to be unmaintained, and searches for the company by name don't bring up anything past 2021. I think they're dead, which is quite the pity.

It obviously needs to be economically viable to pursue, but should be worthy of subsidies to help it find its footing--we'll all be well-served by having better recycling options.

If you learn anything more about this please share!

[modeless]

I think the ore analogy applies to EV batteries, which are very large, can be separated from the rest of the car relatively easily, sorted by type, and processed without other random junk mixed in. Recycling a random heap of arbitrary whole small devices mixed with other trash is a much more difficult problem.