GEA & Atlantic Copper: teamwork towards waste electrical and electronic equipment recycling.
“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” has never been more true than today when the recycling of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) thrives as a solution to metal scarcity and dependency on imports.
A tendency on the rise.
The nonstop rising demand for new electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) has resulted in shortened replacement cycles, leading to the generation of a large amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) that is expected to reach 75mt/a by 2030.
Concerningly, only 20% of the total WEEE amount is properly recycled, with 80% still being either incinerated or disposed of in landfills. It is of the utomost importance to find and enforce new additional sustainable recycling routes for WEEE.
Here is where the recycling of WEEE in smelting furnaces to recover valuable metals is gaining terrain, however, these recycling plants generate off-gases containing harmful substances due to the various types of refrigerants within appliances such as refrigerators, air-conditioners, and water purifiers. GHG emissions emanate also from the fossil-fuel-powered machinery in the plant and there is no standard solution to clean these off-gases.
“With this project GEA is contributing to establish a technological benchmark within a trend-setting development that tackles one of the most pressing issues of our present and future."
Miguel Gonzalez
Senior Director Sales Non-Ferrous & Chemical at GEA
Looking for expertise, finding it in GEA.
Atlantic Copper, the leading copper producer in Spain, has been our business partner for a long timem already, with multiple GEA gas cleaning plants for smelter and converter as well as for anode refining off-gases successfully installed and operating. In recent years, the current WEEE disposal situation motivated Atlantic Copper to invest in a modern recycling plant in Huelva, Spain.
This plant, should be able to process up to 60,000 tonnes of WEEE non-ferrous metal fractions previously treated by authorised waste managers to successfully recover the metals that make up EEE. Among the materials to be recovered are copper, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, tin and more. These metals are critical for the successfully tackling some of the great challenges of the 21st century, such as energy transition, sustainable mobility and digitalization.
A solution to clean the smelter off-gases of a WEEE recycling plant before they are released into the atmosphere consists of multimple process steps and needs to be designed to meet very specific criteria, such as legal environmental requirements, without leaving aside the paramount that safety, performance and reliability have within the planning and execution of the project.
As one of the global leader suppliers of solutions for gas cleaning for non-ferrous and more, GEA is proud to deliver a state-of-the-art multi-tasking gas cleaning plant set to start up in 2025.
3D representation of GEA’s state-of-the-art multi-tasking gas cleaning plant for Atlantic Copper - set to start up in 2025.
Engineering for a Better World
Along with our expertise, that ensures only experienced professionals with in-depth knowledge support and guide GEA customers through their projects, and a comprehensive technical support that translates into swift commissioning and minimized start-up time; at GEA we strive to develop environmentally friendly processes with the smallest footprint possible.
Principle flow diagram of a typical gas cleaning plant customized for recycling furnaces’ off-gases.
Once extracted, metals are not consumed, they are merely used and they can be processed over and over again without their material properties suffering -as long as the technology is the appropriate one. Our decades-long experience in non-ferrous appllications with acid process gases, profound know-how in tailored gas cleaning solutions and constant innovation make us the perfect partner when it comes to the effective recycling of WEEE.
We look forward to many more exciting joint projects with Atlantic Copper along our journey towards Engineering for a Better World.
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