2002 Volume 39 Issue 3 Pages 154-160
Life cycle assessment is currently the most popular and typical method in considering the environmental impact of recycling. We proposed a new recycling process in which copper is recovered from printed wiring board scraps. We succeeded to evaluate the environmental impact of the recycling process and compared it with the conventional extracting process of copper. Printed wiring board scraps were crushed using crushers as a pretreatment, and the product was ground using a hammer mill. The ground products were then separated by a heavy liquid separation using tetrabromoethane. The precipitate contained a high concentration of copper while the float consisted mainly of epoxy resin and glass fibers. We measured the copper content of both fractions by ICP analysis, and evaluated the environmental impact by comparing them with those of extracting process, using NIRE-LCA Ver. 3. As a result, CO2 emission in the recycling process was comparable to that in the extracting process.
