Automotive printed circuit boards recycling: an economic analysis

End of Life Vehicles (ELVs), together with Waste from Electric and Electronic Equipments (WEEEs), are re-known as an important source of secondary raw materials. Since many years, their recovery allowed the restoring of great amounts of metals for new cars' production. However, the management o...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of cleaner production 2016-05, Vol.121, p.130-141
Main Authors: Cucchiella, Federica, D'Adamo, Idiano, Rosa, Paolo, Terzi, Sergio
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Boards
Cost engineering
Economic analysis
Gold
Marketing
Mathematical models
Power plants
Recovering
Recycling
Scrap automotive electronics
Waste printed circuit boards
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:End of Life Vehicles (ELVs), together with Waste from Electric and Electronic Equipments (WEEEs), are re-known as an important source of secondary raw materials. Since many years, their recovery allowed the restoring of great amounts of metals for new cars' production. However, the management of electronic systems embedded into ELVs is yet rarely considered by the scientific literature. The purpose of the paper is trying to fill in this gap through the proposition of an innovative economic model able to identify the presence of profitability within the recovery process of automotive Waste Printed Circuit Boards (WPCBs). Net Present Value (NPV) and Discounted Payback Time (DPBT) will be used to demonstrate the validity of investments in this type of plants. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis on a set of critical variables (plant saturation level, gold (Au) content, Au market price, Au final purity level, WPCBs purchasing cost and opportunity cost) will be conducted for the evaluation of the impact of significant variations on results. Finally, the matching of predicted European ELVs volumes (during the period 2015–2030) and NPVs coming from the economic model will quantify the potential advantages coming from the implementation of this new kind of circular economy.
ISSN:0959-6526
1879-1786
DOI:10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.09.122