Fraunhofer Institut für Verfahrenstechnik und Verpackung

Annual Report 2006/2007

Business Field 6 "Recycling Plastics", page 60-66 (Extract)
Dr. Andreas Mäurer

2004-2005_IVV_Annual_Report_(extract) download

Conference:
Joint International Congress and Exhibition "Electronics goes Green 2004" September 6-8, 2004 Berlin, Germany
Theme:
Materials Recovery from Mobile Phones by the CreaSolv^® process
Speakers:
Dr. Andreas Mäurer and Martin Schlummer - Fraunhofer-Institut für Verfahrenstechnik und Verpackung, Freising and Dr. Gerald G. Altnau - CreaCycle GmbH, Grevenbroich.
 

Abstract:
The European WEEE directive prescribes recycling quotas of 65% and a 75% recovery for mobile phones. This forces recyclers of post-consumer electronic equipment to find economical and ecological feasible waste management approaches. This paper proposes the CreaSolv^® process as a waste treatment option, which bases on the dissolution of the polymeric housing materials, separates the single components and thus allows the production of an ABS/PC polymer recyclate as well as the recovery of a metal rich fraction suitable for metal recovery. 

Waste Management World May - June 2004, pages 33 - 43

Good as new - Recycling plastics from WEEE and packaging wastes

by Andreas Mäurer and Martin Schlummer

Waste electrical and electronic equipment often contains huge quantities of plastics. An innovative process offers an exciting solution to the problem of recycling them. This solvent-based process purifies polymers contaminated with brominated flame retardants or other additives, and produces ure recycled polymers also from other plastic waste streams including expanded polystyrene.

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PlasTicker-News from 22 April 2004 - Link 

The CreaSolv^®-Process – Technical break-through in Plastic Recycling from Electro Waste

Every year approximately 2 million tes of electronic waste are collected in Germany. This quantity corresponds to a fully loaded train with a length of 2,000 km. One fifth of this waste is made up of plastics. These plastics cannot be re-used, because they appear as “mixed waste”, contaminated with undesired flame retardants.  Due to the high content of impurities and contaminants they are classified as requiring “special control“ and have to be waste-handled at a high cost.  This despite the fact that they represent a potentially  high value resource of approximately 400 million Euros,...
...if the contaminants could be removed.

CreaCycle Flyer on 11 January 2004

Recycling of Mobile Phones

WEEE directive drives the development of new separation technologies
The mobile phone sector is one of the fastest growing markets in the IT business. For example from 1995 to 2001 the number of German mobile phone users increased by a factor of 15. Due to the fast technological progress and the trend of changing the mobile every second year huge amounts of waste mobile phones are expected during the next few years.