Decontamination of Mercury contained in CCFLs (Cold Cathode Fluorescence Light) disassembled from Waste LCDs (Liquid Crystal Display)

抄録

Waste LCD units in Korea numbered about 1,570,000 in 2010 and each waste LCD contains 10 CCFLs by average.  Therefore, amount of mercury would be 31.4 kg, considering 2 mg of mercury in each CCFL.  Average life span of LCD is assumed to be approximately 5 years and most of the current and future waste LCDs were not manufactured with recycling friendly design.  Consequently, disassembly and separation of waste LCD units involve non-standardized process and careful separation of CCFLs from them is a very important issue to implement EU's RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) and WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) directives.  In the present research, decontamination of mercury/fluorescent compound mixture from the waste CCFLs was carried out in the pyro-processing pilot-scale mercury decontamination system.