An overview of recycling and treatment of scrap computers

In order to recover valuable materials and to minimize the adverse effects of hazardous materials contained in scrap computers, a dismantling practice is commonly adopted to treat scrap computers. By using the dismantling process, both useful and hazardous materials can be manually separated and retrieved. On the basis of the properties of the retrieved materials, they can be sent to appropriate facilities for further recycling or treatment. Among the retrieved materials, the treatment of hazardous materials from cathode ray tubes (CRT) and printed circuit boards with integrated circuits have drawn considerable attention, thus implying that the proper treatment of such materials can greatly assure the successful recycling of scrap computers. For this reason, this study reviews the available technologies which can be applied to treat and recycle cathode ray tube components and printed circuit boards with integrated circuits. Actual recycling data from a scrap computer recycling plant located in Taiwan are also introduced. The data show that this recycling plant can recover 94.75 wt.% and 45.99 wt.% of useful materials from the main machines (i.e., CPU, power supplier, fan, IC boards, DVD drive, CD drive, hard disk, soft disk, shell casing, etc.) and monitors of scrap computers, respectively. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.