• Resources Recycling
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.26-34
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• 2021

Titanium is the fourth most abundant structural metal, after aluminum, iron, and magnesium. However, it is classified as a 'rare metals', because it is difficult to smelt. In particular, the primary titanium production process is highly energy-intensive. Recycling titanium scraps to produce ingots can reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions by approximately 95 %. However, the amount of metal recycled from scrap remains limited of the difficulty in removing impurities such as iron and oxygen from the scrap. Generally, high-grade titanium and its alloy scraps are recycled by dilution with a virgin titanium sponge during the remelting process. Low-grade titanium scrap is recycled to ferrotitanium (cascade recycling). This paper provides an overview of titanium production and recycling processes.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.9-18
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• 2002

Printed wiring boards(PWBs) of the obsolete computers are composed of various organic and inorganic compounds as well as metals and alloys. As convinced that the valuable metals obtained from the PWBs are effectively utilized as secondary resources when recovered by economical methods, in this study, an investigation for characterizing the physical separation techniques is conducted. For the recovery of them, the sockets and chips dismantled from PWBs by scraping and residual resin boards are subjected to the appropriate separation processes according to the physical properties of each part. In the case of crushed socket scraps size ranged from -2.36 mm to +1.18 mm, approximately 97 wt% of the product obtained by magnetic separation consists of metallic compounds. In the case of chip scraps, 97% of Fe-Ni alloy and 95% of Cu metal are recovered by the combined process of air classification and dry magnetic separation in the size range from -2.36 mm to +0.15 mm. Ball milling is adopted in order to improve the removal efficiency of the thin-printed metallic materials on the residual resin boards and approximately 77% of Cu metal is recovered by zigzag separation after ball milling.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.43-55
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• 2005

As world population increases and the world economy expalds, so does the demand for natural resources especially strategic metals such as cobalt. An accurate assesment of the nation's minerals must include not only the resources available in the ground but also those that become available through recycling. In this paper, data on domestic and international supply of cobalt and its applications by end-user were analyzed for stable security of cobalt resources and effective recycling of cobalt scraps. Also, an initial evaluation of the flow of cobalt-containing materials in the United States was prepared. In 2003, 8,000 metric tons of cobalt were consumed in the United States and an estimated 28% of U.S. cobalt supply was derived from scrap. The superalloy industry and catalyst industries have well-established recycling or cobalt recovery practices. Recycling rates of cobalt scraps from magnet alloy and cemented carbide were relatively low.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.61-70
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• 2014

Tin has been widely used to solder, tin plated steel, bronze alloy, sputtering target for transparent electrode and chemical additives. It has been widely reported to the recycling technologies for tin scraps because of the scarcity and economic efficiency of the reserve. This study was analyzed by using open/registered patents KR, US, CN, JP and EP related to recycling technologies for processing scrap, sludges, waste fluid for plating process and spent alloy containing tin in between 1970 and 2013. Patents were collected using key-words searching and filtered by filtering criteria. The trends of the patents were analyzed by year, country, appliant and technology.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.84-91
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• 2018

In this study, a novel soft information based most probable classification scheme is proposed for sorting recyclable metal alloys with laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). Regression analysis with LIBS captured spectrums for estimating concentrations of common elements can be efficient for classifying unknown arbitrary metal alloys, even when that particular alloy is not included for training. Therefore, partial least square regression (PLSR) is employed in the proposed scheme, where spectrums of the certified reference materials (CRMs) are used for training. With the PLSR model, the concentrations of the test spectrum are estimated independently and are compared to those of CRMs for finding out the most probable class. Then, joint soft information can be obtained by assuming multi-variate normal (MVN) distribution, which enables to account the probability measure or a prior information and improves classification performance. For evaluating the proposed schemes, MVN soft information is evaluated based on PLSR of LIBS captured spectrums of 9 metal CRMs, and tested for classifying unknown metal alloys. Furthermore, the likelihood is evaluated with the radar chart to effectively visualize and search the most probable class among the candidates. By the leave-one-out cross validation tests, the proposed scheme is not only showing improved classification accuracies but also helpful for adaptive post-processing to correct the mis-classifications.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.3-9
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• 2017

In this study, plasma arc remelting behaviors according to arc current, arc voltage, and types of plasma gas were investigated using Kroll processed Ti sponges as anode. In the discharge pressure range of vacuum pump ($200{\sim}300kgf/cm^2$), the arc voltage did not vary greatly with the increase of discharge pressure at a given arc length. This means that the pressure in the vacuum chamber during operation hardly changes and the atmospheric pressure maintains. Under various conditions of arc currents (700~900A), the arc voltage slightly increased with arc current. The effects of anode materials and operational variables on the arc length-arc voltage relationship were compared with the results in previous studies. When the atmospheric gas changed from argon to helium, double effect of improvement on the output of the steady state was observed. The increase of output in the plasma arc device was accompanied by an increase in the melting rate of the Ti sponge and the quality of the ingot surface was also improved. The plasma arc remelting of the new scrap titanium and the old scrap zirconium alloy could result in the fabrication of an ingot with high surface quality.