Low Value E-Waste Processing: Are U.S. Scrap Metal Smelters the Missing Link?

In 1977 - before cell phones, CDs and a then-bearish 15-17-cent-a-pound Lead (Pb) market - for a short time I worked overseeing a lead products warehouse. To my surprise, the warehouse consisted of more than 50 lead-base products. Back then, the range of products derived from recycled lead from our smelter next door amazed me. Lead came (the kind you find in Tiffany glass), as well as oil drilling bits, sheet lead, oxide, pigments, an assortment of solders, varieties of lead alloys and ship/boat anodes. One of the best features of the job was interacting with customers and truckers from all across the U.S.

I continued working in the smelter supervising battery decasing, then reverb and blast furnaces and finally lead alloying operations. I recall using - struggling with, really - old equipment. As a side project, I began updating and maintaining some 1930s-era pollution-control technology. My work quickly came into sharper perspective when I was asked to help oversee construction of a new smelter’s pollution control equipment, later modifying what didn’t work.

After the construction/modification period was over, as environmental manager, I helped operate the largest modern secondary lead (Pb) smelter of its time. Once it went into operation, producing 150,000 pounds per day of pure and alloyed lead ingot (called pigs, hogs and sows) was considered a normal day’s routine.

Everything was pristine and state-of-the-art. We had a new fully equipped laboratory, strong ventilation systems with in-line VOC/CO incineration, high-efficiency filtration, efficient sulfur dioxide absorption, rain water retention-lined pond and acid treatment systems. All process variables were monitored by sensors with programmable logic control through custom software. But this system was frustrating to the old timers.

I recall one day asking Joe Taylor, a union lead man with 30 years of experience, why his team wasn’t using the new lab equipment. He responded, “I can see when the pot (one of a dozen 40-ton pots) is ready.” Sure enough, after checking behind him many times, I found that he was right. I later asked him how he did this; how he knew the pot was within specifications. He responded in multiple riddles. Much later, I figured it out, but you had to be on the floor and observe the metal treatment reaction closely, since the heat emitted was limiting. “Not in the control room looking at the gauges,” Joe once joked, though with some seriousness (you know the type).

One reason I like the smelting industry is it’s a place where grassroots smelter knowledge was earned, not given. And this experience also answered my internal nagging question - why the lab techs never seemed busy. I realized later they were there more for end-of-process quality assurance than for process control. Still, I respected the old timers’ metallurgical knowledge, and realized that even with all the technical sophistication, the furnace and refining team had a special skill I wanted to learn.

The new smelter had five control rooms of the kind you perhaps recall from the movie China Syndrome, with flow diagram operation, variable displays and massive computers. For 1981, it was impressive to be monitoring and controlling hundreds of I/O operational variables with proportional logic control span and flow confirmation. I felt fortunate to work there. Even though my friends thought I was crazy, I learned a lot from the experience, especially about the struggles with regulatory compliance, even when you have the best pollution equipment and controls available. 

I stopped working in the lead smelter in 1985. Ten years later, the smelter set up an electrical power plant, using heat from furnace exhaust to generate steam. I thought it was a great idea. Since then, these and other similar experiences have forever influenced my views about the recycling industry. Those views on complex compliance matters and the application of control standards and principals have also carried over into e-waste metal processing standards.

One interesting thing worth noting that I learned from that experience: copper, lead, aluminum, gold and platinum all use similar process equipment, but do not share the same control standards.

Years later, I find myself relying upon these experiences to guide me through the downstream e-waste recycling maze. As a result of my smelting experiences, I’m opposed to uncontrolled metallurgical sorting or melting processes.

Many secondary smelters’ process improvements in this country have come as a result of public demands, class action suits and regulatory pressures, leaving only large well-funded Lead (Pb) smelters in operation today. However, substantial industry strides have been made to improve lead acid recycling statistics and promote states’ participation in lead acid battery collection and the treatment process.

Here’s a general summary of lead/acid battery recycling state rules in effects:

Summary (Total = 42 States and 1 City) • 37 States and 1 City with the Battery Counsel International Model (with and without deposit); no landfill• 7 States with a $5 deposit in lieu of trade-in requirement; and • 2 States with a $10 deposit in lieu of trade-in requirement. •5 States with a ban on municipal solid waste disposal (landfills and/or incinerators).

I especially applaud the new lead acid battery “recycle material” percentage of 60-80%. 

Connecting lead/acid battery and end-of-life electronics recycling, it would seem electronic OEMs still have a way to go to capture e-waste components, as battery manufacturers have, and recycle the legacy material into new electronics.  I must admit, the electronic lead/acid battery recycling rates and infrastructure are impressive. But I hope it doesn’t take another 30 years for electronic recycling to reach a maturity level equal to lead/acid batteries recycling.

Looking at the big e-waste picture, we may have a ways to go. Historically, PCs and communications gear have sustainable recycling attributes. The components and precious metal values currently offset costs of domestic preprocessing and reclaiming. In addition, high-value e-waste concentrates have the support of precious metal smelters, having been around for some time now.

But the Achilles heel of our potential national e-waste collection infrastructure, next to CRT processing, is “low value” (or unsubsidized) e-waste categories, which actually comprise the majority of potential e-waste volumes and/or toxin releases. At present, our country is trying to address the situation with CRTs and cell phones, with some states subsidizing that activity through consumer levies and surcharges. But for far too long, we have continued to ignore growing “low value” e-waste categories and account for e-waste volumes, those positioned for export and/or landfills.

Unfortunately, domestic low-value e-waste is not sustainable under “manual dismantling” operations, without subsidies. Broken-down e-waste constituent value cannot offset domestic labor and compliance infrastructure. One example: I had a person dismantle an oversized copier once. The study revealed it took $45 to realize $20 in metal and plastic returns. This is the main reason sustainable “low value” electronic processing doesn’t work in America.

Compounding the e-waste problem, there’s a need for U.S. e-waste businesses to invest in and demonstrate low-value e-waste process capability, not to just invest in subsidized and/or high-value e-waste manual dismantling operations. It seems U.S. e-waste recycling industry capacity is going in this direction.

But what’s extremely important and sorely lacking is the focus on clean, low-value automated e-waste technologies at high volumes, especially process printers, copiers and similar types of uncovered electronics devices and into “U.S. smelter grade” metals and recyclable plastics. This will likely leave ceramics and fiberglass as solid hazardous waste. However, by-products should be managed in accordance with the solid waste rules and be completely transparent.

New smelter furnace burner technology is another key to lowering pollution. The newer furnace burners do not use the nitrogen portion of our air for combustion, essentially eliminating nitrogen oxides from the gas (80% volume reduction) stream during burner operation and metal melting.

In the final analysis, the use of our existing domestic metal smelters is part of the overall e-waste solution. The new low value e-waste technology must produce metal products, suitable for our existing domestic smelters, not low-value copper base chopped circuit cards. The process must produce metal streams pure enough to guarantee a smelter metallurgical chemistry. In the long run, it’s the greenest path, as it maintains e-waste process control within our borders.

Once we acknowledge as an industry our metal-processing capability and how it can be used to solve our e-waste problems, we as a nation will be closer to solving a domestic low-value e-waste-to-metal (toxins) resource recycling challenge.  But—and this is important—it must be smelter- grade scrap metal only.

As I reflect on the exciting times of producing pure and alloyed lead (Pb) products from truckloads of spent lead/acid batteries, I realize there’s one fundamental difference between now and then. Before 1990, lead acid batteries were mostly manufactured in the U.S. That has since changed: many U.S.-based lead/acid battery manufacturing plants have shut down. The remaining OEM battery manufacturing in the U.S. has strong ties to local lead smelters, and in some cases actually owns them.

So I have to ask: since electronics for the most part are no longer manufactured in America, is there really any national incentive to build a low-value e-waste collection and pre-processing infrastructure, similar to that used for recycling batteries? It all boils down to advanced e-waste pre-processing in America, and rendering U.S. smelter-grade metal products from end-of-life e-waste. As always, industry know-how and leadership will solve the problems arising from its own poisons.

Comments

[Mark Schneider]

Jim, I read your posted artical from Oct.2008 and found it interesting. But I always wondered if scrap steel that has been painted with lead based paint when recycled, can the lead be seperated out from the other properties in the metal?