• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.201-206
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• 1992

Annual amount of plastics waste including rubber and leather waste, generated in 1990 was about 2,600,000 tons. Amount of generation of plastics waste has rapidly increased, but fractions of recycling and incineration have gradually decreased. Recently, two-stage incinerator, consisting of gasifier and gas combustor, draws much attention in Korea. Plastics are gasified in the starved air condition in the gasifier and produced gas is fired in the combustor. Combustion of produced gas is much easier than that of solid plastics, and produces a little pollutants. Standardzation of technology and process automation are still needed, but this incineration technology is in the commercial stage. Next topic concerned with this two-stage incineration will be how to treat complex plastics waste including toxic substances generated from automobiles and household appliances. Pyrolysis, realized by indirect heating in inert atmosphere, can provide high-quality products with minimum emissions. Many plastics are easily decomposed into oil in pyrolysis conditions, which can be utilized as chemical feedstocks, or gasoline or kerosene depending on feed materials and operating conditions. This has been demonstrated in several pilot-scale tests performed in Japan, Germany, etc. Easy removal of HCl from PVC is one of the most decisive merits of pyrolysis process. But in general, further efforts should be made for the process to obtain marketability. The future of pyrolysis process depends on public concern about environmental problems and oil prices.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.17-24
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• 2016

This study aims at evaluating environmental impacts on recycling process of used small household appliances. The recycling process mainly consists of manual dismantling, crushing and various sorting processes to effectively recover valuable resources and to minimize environmental impact. In this study, life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is applied to analyze major environmental parameters such as GWP, ADP, POCP, EP, etc. One of the major impact categories on the weight basis in the recycling process is global warming (GWP) 57.1%, next to ADP 35.4% and POCP 4.8%, respectively. As a result of environmental impact on recovery of valuable resources/ton, the GWP of plastics for ABS is highest (33.7%) compared to ferrous metals (9.4%). The effects of environmental and economical benefit are also analyzed to compare with the amount of virgin materials to be recycled by recycled materials. In addition, recycled materials are also more economical in comparison to virgin materials due to the environmental avoiding effect by recycling. In conclusion, the key environmental issues related to the recycling of e-wastes are analyzed and therefore, the effective recycling process will contribute to mitigate global warming potential in the near future.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.71-77
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• 2013

Electronic products such as appliances, computers, and cellular phones have printed circuit boards (PCBs) in common and the PCBs in the waste electronic products contain valuable metals and organic resins. In Korea, recovery and recycling of the organic resins as well as the valuable metallics from the wastes are required indeed as the most of resources are being imported from abroad. In this article, the patents and papers for the recycling of organic residues from the waste PCBs were collected and analyzed. The open patents of USA (US), European Union (EP), Japan (JP), and Korea (KR) and SCI journals from 1979 to 2012 were investigated. The patents and journals were collected using key-words and filtered by the definition of the technology. The patents and journals were analyzed by the years, countries, companies, and technologies and the technical trends were discussed in this paper. It is showed sluggish relatively activity of published papers and patent applications for polymer manufacturing technology in local and abroad.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.69-77
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• 2017

Used small household appliances(small e-waste) consists of a variety of complex materials and components. The small e-waste is mainly composed of plastics and an important potential source of waste plastic. The black plastics, particularly are very difficult to separate by resin type and therefore these are mainly recycled in the form of a mixtures. In the present study, the sorting technologies such as gravity and electro static separation, near-infrared ray(NIR) and IR/Raman optical sorting separation on mixture of black plastics were analyzed and their limitations on sorting process were also investigated. The Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy(LIBS) spectrum of each black plastics was used for identification of black plastics by resin type, and after analyzing the normalization operation, Principal Component Analysis(PCA) was carried out. The spectrum data was optimized through PCA process. In order to improve the identification accuracy and sorting efficiency of black plastics, it is necessary to design a classifier with high efficiency and to improve the performance and reliability of the classifier by applying the field of intelligent algorithms.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.120-131
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• 2009

Most world-leading companies are aware that Environment and Health and Safety Issues are critical to the product quality and sustainable growth of their company. Environment-friendly efforts are seen in almost all aspects of business operations in an advanced nation. The Extended Producer Responsibility(EPR) and EU Directive on Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment(WEEE) attempt to tackle the growing quantity of WEEE by making producers responsible for the costs of the collection and recycling of their products at the End-of-Life(EOL). To implement the RFID-based integration system for EOL household electric appliances, such as washing machines and refrigerators, we analyzed the process of collecting, recovering, and recycling the EOL products returned from the distribution points. Furthermore, we proposed a soon-to-be process using the RFID-based integration system in the metropolitan recycling center(MRC). This soon-to-be process model is composed of RFID tags, readers, ALEs, applications and several devices. Through the introduction of the RFID-based integration system, we are expecting to see increasing traceability and real-time management for EOL products from customers, and also improvements in valuable reusable materials(VRM) produced from recycling processes.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.12-27
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• 2011

DOWA group has been working on metal recycling applying the smelting and refining process of KOSAKA Smelter. DOWA has developed it's metal recycling technologies through the treatment of black ore(complex sulfide ores) that contain many kinds of non-ferrous metals. In addition to these special technologies, DOWA has strengthened its hydrometallurgical process of precious metals and ability to deal with low-grade materials such as used electrical appliances or vehicles. On the other hand, JX Nippon Mining & Metals Corporation(JX-NMMC) carries out its metal recycling and industrial waste treatment businesses employing advanced separation, extraction and refining technologies developed through its extensive experience in the smelting of non-ferrous metals. JX-NMMC collects approximately 100,000t/y of copper and precious metal scraps from waste sources such as electronic parts, mobile phones, catalytic converters, print circuit boards and gold plated parts. These items are recycled through the smelting and refining operations of Saganoseki smelter and Hitachi Metal-recycling complex(HMC). In this like, metal recycling industries combined with environmental business service in Japan have been developed through excellent technologies for mineral processing and non-ferrous smelting. Also, both group, Dowa and JX-NMMC, were contributed to establish Japan's recycling-oriented society as the typical leading company of non-ferrous smelting. Now. it is an important issue to set up the collection system for e-waste.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.73-83
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• 2017

Used small household appliances have a wide variety of product types and component materials, and contain high percentage of black plastics. However, they are not being recycled efficiently as conventional sensors such as near-infrared ray (NIR), etc. are not able to detect black plastic by types. In the present study, an automatic sorting system was developed based on laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) to promote the recycling of waste plastics. The system we developed mainly consists of sample feeder, automatic position recognition system, LIBS device, separator and control unit. By applying laser pulse on the target sample, characteristic spectral data can be obtained and analyzed by using CCD detectors. The obtained data was then treated by using a classifier, which was developed based on artificial intelligent algorithm. The separation tests on waste plastics also were carried out by using a lab-scale automatic sorting system and the test results will be discussed. The classification rate of the radial basis neural network (RBFNNs) classifier developed in this study was about > 97%. The recognition rate of the black plastic by types with the automatic sorting system was more than 94.0% and the sorting efficiency was more than 80.0%. Automatic sorting system based on LIBS technology is in its infant stage and it has a high potential for utilization in and outside Korea due to its excellent economic efficiency.

• Hwankyungkyoyuk
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.58-71
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• 1996

The purpose of this study was to investigate the rural housewives' recognition and practice on environmental preservation. The subjects of this study were 300 rural housewives living in Chung-buk province. Questionaires were distributed to them during a week from August $25^{th}$ to August $31^{th}$ in 1995. Major findings were as follows: 1. The saved water quite well in washing their faces and the dishes compared with urban housewives, but they did not save water so well in using the lavatory. They used synthetic detergent, one of water pollutants, more often than natural soaps in shampooing and laundering. In addition, they did not use a measuring cup. It resulted in the waste of detergent and aggravation of water pollution. 2. Food waste was disposed of properly, but used batteries were not collected separately. A disposable vinyl bag was more commonly used than a reusable shopping basket. The reason for not using a shopping basket was bothering or uncustomary. Since most of them did not know refillable products of goods with environmental mark, they did not use those. Therefore, housewives should be educated in order to prevent soil pollution. 3. The use of spry-type pesticide and hair treatment, one of air pollutants, was wide-spread among them. They hardly recognized and practiced saving of electric power when they used household electric appliances. 4. The major source of environmental knowledge was mass media like TV of radio. Many of them did not know the practical ways to solve the environmental education program. In conclusion, low level of recognition and practice of rural housewives on environmental preservation indicated that a systematic environmental education program should be developed and implemented.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.22-32
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• 2013

Glass materials possess unique functional characteristics of ceramics different from those of metals, which has marked glass as one of the mainstay materials in the history of mankind. Nowadays, industrial sophistication necessitates comparable "smart" attributes of glass materials as a significantly advanced form of sophistication. Smart glasses are increasingly applied in many state-of-the-art digital appliances such as displays and semiconductors and waste is also expected to accumulate therefrom in the near future: More than 60,000 tons of smart glass wastes were reported as of 2012, for example. In the present paper, current status of domestic Korean smart glass industry and related recycling enterprise have been comprehensively investigated. Finally, Korean domestic smart glass recycling technology and its future prospect are also briefly presented.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2022.11a
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• pp.1025-1027
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• 2022

도시화가 급속도로 진행됨에 따라서 일상생활에서 생활폐기물의 관리와 처리에 대한 문제가 심각해지고 있다. 이 문제를 해결하고자 어플리케이션을 통해 생활폐기물 처리를 쉽게 할 수 있는 시스템을 제안한다. '싹처리'는 편리성, 정확성, 확장성, 수익성을 가지고 (중)대형 생활 폐기물 처리하는 딥러닝 어플리케이션이다. 어플리케이션 내의 저장된 딥러닝 과정으로 학습되어진 생활폐기물 분류 모델을 통해 폐기물 사진을 자동 인식하는 과정으로 누구나 쉽게 폐기물 배출을 신청할 수 있다. 정확한 딥러닝 알고리즘과 전이학습, 데이터 검수 등을 통해 높은 성능의 사물 자동 인식을 할 수 있다. 이 시스템을 통해 임산부, 장애인, 독거노인 등의 사회적 약자는 불필요한 과정 없이 손쉽게 폐기물을 처리할 수 있고, 더 나아가 중고시장의 활성화에 기여할 수 있는 가치가 있다.