With the growing number of electronic devices throughout the world comes equal amounts of electronic wastes, for which they need for a safe & efficient mode of recycling arises. Close to 50 million tonnes of electronic waste is generated every year, out of which only 20% manage to get properly recycled. The other 80% end up in landfills which poses a huge threat to the environment, harming every aspect of it.
The current method of recycling e-waste involves mechanical crushers, followed by chemical baths highly expensive, requires a lot of manual labor & if not carried out properly, can cause tremendous damage to the general health of people as well as causing huge ecological issues & end up destroying the environment.
Japan has been using pulsed electric discharges which are a far safer, cleaner as well as a much more efficient mode of recycling e-waste.
The pulsed power recycling method has proven to be highly effective in processing a whole range of waste materials.
To test out its effectiveness, scientists used the most widely found e-waste, CD ROMs. The test results showed that the method could separate plastics from metals with around 30 pulses at close to 35J/Pulse.
For the detection of the material separation process done by this method, the researchers conducted further tests by examining the plasma discharge with the help of a high-speed camera.
Proper disposal or recycling of electronic waste is one of the biggest problems faced by the world due to its omnipresence. There is almost no populated place on planet earth which does not have at least some electronic waste which needs to get disposed of recycled. Japan’s pulse electric discharge technique is hopefully the best method of safely disposing of or recycling electronic waste & might help with the overwhelming amount of electronic waste in the world.
