ELECTROVALUE

ELECTROVALUE – MID TERM EVALUATION - June 2010

In the ELECTROVALUE project Mid-Term Meeting, held on June 16^th, 2010 the current status of the project was presented to the EC LIFE program Desk Officer and Financial Officer. In this first half of the project, several components were selected to be collected by the partner company, Interecycling, and then sent to the partner company EMPLACE. This company will use these components to build parts that will integrate the control panel of the equipment  selected as a case study.  Click here for full report

Workshop C3P/NASA

2009

The Electrovalue Project was presented on the C3P and NASA Technical Workshop, “GLOBAL COLLABORATION IN ENVIRONMENTAL AND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY STRATEGIES", held  at GE Global Research, Garching, Germany, in November 10 - 12, 2009.

Three presentations were produced:

Title: ELECTROVALUE Project: Towards E-Waste Recovery

Margarida Pinto, Director Assistant/Project Manager, ISQ – HQ Portugal

Title: Assessment of WEEE Reuse in Electrovalue: An LCA Approach

Eduardo Silva, ISQ - HQ Portugal

Title: E-waste Management: Market Impact from a Manager Perspective

Mónica Luízio, Amb3e - Portugal

Workshop C3P/NASA

2008

The Electrovalue Project was introduced on the C3P and NASA Technical Workshop, "Enhancing Mission through Proactive Environmental Risk Mitigation" held at the University of California San Diego, November 18-20, 2008.

Eng. Margarida Pinto, from ISQ, made a presentation about the Electrovalue Project under the title “European SME Implementation of Lead-Free Soldering European Overview”.

Electric and Electronic Eco-Assembly Alternatives for the valorisation of end-of life products in the recycling market

OBJECTIVES:

The ELECTROVALUE project was submitted and approved by the European LIFE Program. The project will develop and improve the recycling market for the electrical and electronic (EE) products through the reuse and recovery of EE components, providing support to the electrical and electronic SMEs, in order to improve their competitiveness by adopting sustainable waste management, materials and process technologies by integrating Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and “valorisation” of end-of-life in electric and electronic products.

The project will aim at the recovery and reuse of the more used or high value EE components from a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) assembly and less available ones in the market and reusing them individually in other products. Available and/or improved disassembly techniques will be used to successfully remove the components and sort them in an appropriate way.

The market for these recovered parts will need to be shown that final products that use them will present the reliability expected. Therefore the project addresses this by carrying out soldering trials, LCA and testing the reliability of refurbishment boards against similar products that contain only new parts (OEM-Original Equipment Manufacturers).

Parameters such as material costs, consumption, time, emissions, will be very important for the final assessment of the implementation of such alternative.

The project will also focus on the creation of specialised disassembly centres at the recycling companies, leading to a new business opportunity for the recycling market as well as new employment opportunities, and therefore to the introduction of “valuable waste” in the market again.

The development of a reused component database to support the recycling centres in the evaluation of electric and electronic products, in terms of eco-efficiency and reuse capability will be carried out in the project. This tool will allow the SMEs to access all the information related to standards, legislation, guidelines for compliance, waste management alternatives and to compare the products in terms of ElectroValue particularly focused on eco-efficiency, life time and reliability level. Waste management and costs associated to each alternative, including a friendly user based photolibrary to compare standard and reused EEE boards based the level of quality required, will be approached.

ACTIVITIES:
 

- Life Cycle Analysis
 

- Waste management and EE components reuse assessment /Reliability issues

- Management tool

- Dissemination activities
 

- Disassembly Pilot Center
 

PROJECT DURATION:

The Project will start in January 2009 and will be finished in December 2011.
 

PARTNERS:

- ISQ – Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade
 

- C3P – Centro Para Prevenção da Poluição
 

- INTERECYCLING – Sociedade de Reciclagem S.A.
 

- EMPLACE – Produção Electrónica S.A.
 

- ANIMEE - Associação Portuguesa das Empresas do Sector Eléctrico e Electrónico
 

- APEMETA – Associação Portuguesa de Empresas de Tecnologias Ambientais