Although the above data highlights the urgency and severity of global waste management, it also implies the great potential of recycling industry. As a science and technology consulting company that has been paying attention to green technology, we have summarized some opinions in the industry experience of recycling technology and wrote to communicate with you.
Recycling is a wide-ranging industry, and its application scenarios are very rich, ranging from classified recycling of domestic garbage, recycling of garbage in special scenes (oceans), recycling of special materials, recycling of materials in enterprises and factories, and even novel ideas such as developing degradable alternative materials from the source and using waste materials as works of art.
There are two main ideas for start-ups and enterprises to enter the recycling industry: many innovators choose to set up recycling start-ups specializing in waste utilization or optimizing waste treatment processes; There are also many hardware product companies or factories that add the concept of recycling when designing and iterating products, thus greatly reducing the manufacturing cost and material cost and realizing a closed-loop supply chain, such as Apple's product recycling and Space Exploration Technology Company's rocket recycling.
How to choose market segments, how to manage costs and profits, or what support policies are available. It is necessary to adapt measures to local conditions and make decisions according to their materials. Unfortunately, this article will not give a detailed introduction. Friends who need it can add our contact information to communicate directly.
This paper will introduce from three key angles that are easily overlooked, namely: recycling efficiency, pollution caused by recycling, and recycling design of products.
|? Recovery efficiency
When the energy and resources consumed in the recycling process are greater than the direct production or development of new alternative solutions, it is necessary to re-evaluate the solutions.
For example, the widely used solar panels can achieve a recovery rate of 96% under the current technology. Why is its recovery still a pain point? At present, the most common recycling method of solar panels requires many steps, such as disassembly, crushing, heat treatment and so on. Processing a module of 1m2 costs about 12, and recycling solar panels on a 200-square-meter roof costs about $2,400, equivalent to15,000 RMB. If this cost cannot be shared equally with consumers, it is difficult for enterprises to pay for the recycling of expensive solar panels. Therefore, breaking through the existing technology, reducing the recycling cost, or directly processing and reusing the recycled solar panels are two breakthrough directions.
There is also a "reuse" scheme for the recovery of chemical batteries, which is called "secondary battery utilization". Some recycling startups recycle old battery packs of the same model, conduct quality inspection and screening, reassemble reusable battery units, and add BMS to continue to use. Therefore, before the chemical components are recovered, the existing battery structure can be fully utilized, thus reducing the recovery cost from the whole life cycle of the battery. However, in this scheme, it will be more troublesome to upgrade and improve the BMS system, and the accuracy of screening needs to be determined.
Source: Shutterstock David W.
|? Pollution caused by recycling
Recycling technology exists in this province to protect the environment and reduce pollution. What about the pollution generated in the recycling process?
One way is to achieve a direct technological breakthrough. For example, the solar panels mentioned above: most of the solar panels are glass, as well as silicon wafers, EVA films, metal bus bars and so on. However, they still contain toxic elements such as cadmium, lead, antimony, etc. Whether they are directly landfilled or directly discharged into wastewater during recycling, they will cause environmental pollution. Many laboratories and universities are working hard to improve chemical recovery rate and reduce waste water, waste liquid or dust pollution, and have made many technological breakthroughs.
Similarly, lithium battery recycling will also produce some pollution. Princeton NuEnergy, a recycling startup company of Princeton University, has successfully brought the patented technology of lithium battery cleaning treatment into industry and daily life. This technology uses clean and innovative processes to regenerate cathode and anode materials without completely decomposing compounds, so it won the clean technology seed fund of CSIT (Science, Innovation and Technology Committee) and a prize of 75,000 US dollars in August 20021.
Another idea is to fundamentally change the choice of materials and develop degradable alternative materials. For example, we all know that plastic pollution is very serious now, and China also issued a plastic restriction order earlier. Many tea shops provide paper straws for this reason, but we often hear people who drink tea around complain that "milk tea is soft after drinking straws".
LOLIWARE, a startup in new york, is developing seaweed materials to make disposable straws stronger than paper straws. Imagine the saturation of domestic tea shops and the expansion trend of globalization. If there is a low-cost degradable material to replace the straw, the market profit is still very moving.
|? Product recycling design.
Recycling design is an ecological design strategy, which can systematically help design teams to create environmentally friendly products, reduce waste disposal costs and even complete a closed-loop supply chain. Common strategies are shown in the following figure: optimizing material selection, improving process technology, optimizing transportation system, reducing pollution and waste during product use, optimizing product life cycle, and designing "scrapping system" for product scrapping.
The Wheel of Ecological Design Strategy (Crul and Dieh, 2009).
When it comes to companies that do a good job in recycling design, they have to mention Apple and Space Exploration Technology.
Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of environment, policy and social affairs, once said: "Advanced recycling technology will definitely become an important part of the supply chain of the electronics industry, and Apple is opening up a new road to push the whole industry forward ..."
Apple encourages users to actively recycle old equipment by implementing recycling programs such as trade-in. /kloc-in 0/8, 7.8 million apple devices were renovated, preventing more than 48,000 tons of electronic waste from flowing to landfills. In terms of material selection, 100% recycled tin and 100% recycled aluminum are used to manufacture key components and fuselage shells, which greatly reduces the carbon footprint of aircraft. At the same time, Apple also launched a new generation of mechanized processing system Daisy, which dismantled and recycled various important materials and realized a closed-loop supply chain of some precious materials.
Space Exploration Technology Co., Ltd. is also a dust collector on the recycling road, and achieved the100th rocket recycling on February 202 1 day and February 2 1 day respectively. From the first reuse of the rocket on 20 17 to the end of 202 1, "... saved at least $23 billion in launch cost, setting the lowest unit price per kilogram in the world (about $ 14 10 for Space Exploration Technology Company and the lowest $5,000/kg for other launchers)".
To achieve such a high-precision vertical landing recovery rocket, not only the perfect combination of vertical takeoff and landing technology, vector thrust technology, secondary ignition, throttle control technology, pneumatic control, material engineering and other top technologies is needed. , but also the embodiment of outstanding innovation and super-high execution, and finally achieved the space status that space exploration technology company now makes other launchers salivate.
Conclusion: It takes a lot of time and experience for large companies to make changes, but flexible and fast product startups can directly incorporate recycling and other issues into the production R&D process in the iteration, greatly reducing costs; Startups that focus on recycling and environmental protection are also vulnerable to policy support and public support, with a huge market and broad prospects.
Our free founder, science and technology, has always paid attention to and supported green technology. We hope that more start-ups will pay attention to environmental protection, actively explore its huge potential market, do things beneficial to the earth's environment and earn profits.