Methodology to prospect electronics compositions and flows, illustrated by material trends in printed circuit boards

Raw Materials are crucial in the development, production, and improvement of modern-day technology. Reliable access to critical, scarce, and valuable materials used in electronics is becoming a worldwide concern. Therefore, the quantification of material recovery from the urban mine is currently pursued worldwide. Commonly, data on (Waste) Electrical and Electronic Equipment is scattered, not harmonized, and uses different types of classifications and terminology. This provides a big challenge of a structured mapping of secondary raw materials in the urban mine. To address these issues, a state-of-the-art methodology has been developed and is presented by analyzing and tracking printed circuit boards in different key Electrical and Electronic Equipment over time. A total of 4051 composition data records where analyzed to extract the concentration of 19 elements in printed circuit boards between 1990 until 2020. The methodology harmonizes urban mine data, provides structured information that can be used to analyze and monitor the impact of product trends on their components and concentration of the elements in electronics. The resulting database and harmonization protocols are made freely available at the urban mine platform.

WAGNER Michelle;  HUISMAN Jacob;  LOEVIK Amund;  HABIB Hina;  MAEHLITZ Paul;  VAN DER VOET Ester; 

2022-02-15

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

JRC117591

0959-6526 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652621013834?via%3Dihub,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC117591,   

10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127164 (online),