The properties of metals provide unique benefits and advantages for their recycling. Unlike other recycled materials,such as paper and plastic, metals can be repeatedly recycled without degradation of their properties.It is widely rcognised that recycling of metals results in sgnificant savings in energy consumption.
Some of the challenges I see would be first the increasing use of composite materials. While composite materials (e.g. copper-clad aluminium, copper-clad-steel, nickel-clad copper, ... can be interesting since they combine the best of both worlds, from a recycling perspective, they can be challenging. Often one will not be able to re-use both metals to their full potential.
Another challenge is alloys. All metals are used to a lesser or greater extent in a wide variety of alloys. When the metal using equipment reaches end-of-life, it is very likely to end up with scrap of different alloys compositions. Not only are these alloys diverse, often they are unknown.
Another challenge is dispersed uses. It's easy enough to recycle metals in concentrated uses, but e.g. metal is used in many applications such as zippers for clothing, electronics equipment, ...
What is the background of your question?
Recycling widens the efficient use of metals and minerals,reduces pressures on landfills and incinerators,which results in significant major enegy savings compared to primary production.Current recycling rate of various metals like copper, aluminium,iron/steel,lead,nickel,zinc are above 35%.
Dear Lala
The metal can be recycled indefinitely. Cans of beer , soft drinks can turn into cookware or else a piece for airplanes . The work has to start at the time of discharge home . If materials such as cans , pots or an old tap are discarded in the commom trash can take up to 500 years to decompose , and the way of recycling is stopped
There are four metals that can be melted down and made into new products :
Aluminum, Iron , Steel and Copper
The industry of metallurgy search these scraps to be able to recycle and reduce energy consumption , very large , in the preparation of this metal to be able to recycle "
Aluminium can be in several formats , but when it comes to recycling, which recycles most cans are : 98 % . About 65 % of the iron industry uses nowadays come from recycling . When it comes to steel, 30 % of Brazilian production come straight from scrap .
According to Termomecânica , the leader in Copper production in Brazil , 50 % of what they produce come from recycled metal . The material is in electrical wiring and telephone
In the market , the classification is much more extensive . The price list of the company that buys and resells metals have 32 categories according to the type of alloy and the type of industry that will buy it.
Brazil is one of the countries that make recycling more.
Some of the challenges I see would be first the increasing use of composite materials. While composite materials (e.g. copper-clad aluminium, copper-clad-steel, nickel-clad copper, ... can be interesting since they combine the best of both worlds, from a recycling perspective, they can be challenging. Often one will not be able to re-use both metals to their full potential.
Another challenge is alloys. All metals are used to a lesser or greater extent in a wide variety of alloys. When the metal using equipment reaches end-of-life, it is very likely to end up with scrap of different alloys compositions. Not only are these alloys diverse, often they are unknown.
Another challenge is dispersed uses. It's easy enough to recycle metals in concentrated uses, but e.g. metal is used in many applications such as zippers for clothing, electronics equipment, ...
What is the background of your question?
Future recycling challenges that must be faced in irder to increase the importance of this activities in the aim of increasing efficiency and the reduction of the consumption of different types of metals in all economic activities.
The activity with the greatest potential to improve metal recycling is collection. Such an effort is not so important for iron, copper, or lead, which are typically used in forms that make them easy to identify and reprocess, but is absolutely crucial for the vast majority of metals, used in small quantities in highly mixed products. Collecting discards with high efficiency and with proper care (to avoid mixing that would frustrate later proceasing) is largely an issue of behavioral habits and incentives, as well as initiatives such as re- quired recycling deposits on consumer goods. Collection and reprocessing of many metals is also hampered by the international trade in used products that sends complex products to countries with inadequate recycling facilities. The situation clearly calls for international policy initiatives to minimize the seemingly bizarre situation of spending large amounts of technology, time, energy, and money to acquire scarce metals from the mines, and then throwing them away after a single use.
After attending to collection, the next challenge is to involve the designers of future products in choosing material combinations with recycling in mind. Only designers can reverse the current trend of greater material mixing, but current designs are actually less recyclable than was the case a few decades ago. Warnings regarding the increasingly dissipative use of metals are not new, but applications such as nanomaterials and microelectronics generally introduce major recycling challenges. Ideally, an information feed- back loop to materials scientists and designers would emphasize the consequences of complex designs on the recyclability of products, leading, for example, to a redesign of alloys to accommodate more scrap.
The final frontier is improved recycling technology. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that we manufacture modern products with the best possible technologies we can devise, but generally recycle them with relatively basic approaches. This situation has evolved from a lack of incentives in many directions—little to no support for implementation of new recycling technologies, the unfavorable image of the scrap yard, the frequent specification of virgin material by
manufacturers, and sheer lack of knowledge as to the elemental composition of modern products. It is true that recycling is often limited by unfavorable economics, but it is equally true that those economics reflect a lack of attention to design for recycling and a reluctance to invest in the improved separation and sorting equipment that has emerged within the past decade. It is time that corporations, industries, universities, and governments work together to transform the state of today’s metal recycling by demonstrating the need for continuing research on improved technologies, the potential benefits of deployment of the improved technologies now available, and the promise suggested by regulatory and financial initiatives that speak to these challenges.
From the standpoint of the sustainability of metals, the world is at a crossroads. After millennia of products made almost entirely of a handful of metals, modern technology is today using almost every possible metal, but often only once. Few approaches could be more unsustainable. If as a global society we can collect and reuse almost everything, design products with optimized recycling in mind, and use transformative technology to make the whole process exemplary, we will be helping to ensure that the materials scientists of the future have for their use the full palette of the wonders of the periodic table, and thereby provide society with increasingly innovative and remarkable products.
Metal toxicological issues will also influence the way in which metalsare used in future.I agree that challenge that lies ahead is to devise policies and actions.Environment management tools such as life cycle Assessment may prove to be beneficial for these purposes.
Mining and metals are critical to society – today and in the future. Their contribution to the Millennium Development Goals is but one indication of this indispensable role. To achieve this end, implications must be carefully managed and specific steps must be taken by all concerned to ensure an equitable distribution of costs, benefits, risks and responsibilities. This can be done. We believe that it is in fully considering all aspects of this distribution - throughout the life cycles and complex value chains that we are tied to – that mining and metals’ full contribution can be understood and realized. This realization is at the heart of the green economy.
www.icmm.com/document/2559
Main problem with metal recycling are alloys. Pure metals Al cans (97-98% Al, and limited number of alloys) can be recycled many times. But get a typical mess of steel alloys on ferrous scrapyard - and you will get progressive degradation (usually embrittlement) with each recycle. Therefore, most iron recycling add fresh materials (~30% or more) to dilute and compensate impurities. Same problem with zinc and copper smelting (Al,Zn,Cu,Fe are the only metals recycled today, as i know).
Overall, metal recycling for now is terribly inefficient.
Jorge Morales Pedraza properly mentioned what design practices currently are not favorable for recycling - and this is not going to change until humankind will be forced to mine today`s garbage dumps. Or until there will be no place for new dumps.
Recycling of slags can be a possiblity. Utilization of microbial means can be employed for recovery of metal values from slags.
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