According to statistics, approximately 1.3 billion tons of waste are generated globally every year; by 2025, this may increase to 2.2 billion tons per year; and by 2050, this amount is expected to increase by 70% %. Therefore, waste management has become a matter of close concern in various countries, and people and enterprises are paying more and more attention to green and sustainable development. While receiving policy support and public attention, industry and technology in the field of environmental protection are also developing rapidly, especially In recent years, environmental topics such as waste recycling, clean energy, and carbon neutrality have become hot topics at major innovation summits.
Although the above data highlights the urgency and severity of global waste management, it also implies the huge potential of the recycling industry. As a technical consulting company that has always paid attention to green technology, we at Free Founder Technology have summarized some insights from our industry experience in recycling technology and written them to share with you.
Recycling is a wide-ranging industry with rich application scenarios, from the classification and recycling of domestic waste, waste recycling in special scenarios (ocean), to the recycling and reuse of special materials, to corporate , the material cycle within the factory can be involved, and you can even develop degradable alternative materials from the source, and use waste items to make art and other novel ideas.
There are two main ideas for start-ups and companies to enter the recycling industry: many innovators choose to establish recycling start-ups that specialize in waste utilization or optimizing waste treatment processes; there are also many hardware product companies or factories that are designing and The concept of recycling (Design for Recycling) is added when iterating products, thereby greatly reducing manufacturing costs and material costs, and achieving a closed-loop supply chain, such as Apple's product recycling and SpaceX's rocket recycling.
How to choose market segments, how to manage costs and profits, or what supporting policies are available. Such issues that need to be adapted to local conditions and application. Unfortunately, we will not introduce them in detail in this article. Friends who need it can add our contact information to communicate directly.
This article will introduce three aspects that are easily overlooked but very critical, namely: recycling efficiency, pollution caused by recycling, and product recycling design.
|?Recycling Efficiency
When the energy and resources consumed in the recycling process are greater than direct production or the development of new alternative solutions, the program needs to be re-evaluated.
For example, the widely used solar panels can achieve a recycling rate of 96% under current technology. Why is its recycling still a pain point? Because the most common recycling method for solar panels currently requires multiple steps such as dismantling, crushing, and heat treatment, the cost of processing a 1m2 module is about US$12, and recycling of solar panels on a 200m2 roof costs US$2,400, equivalent to 15,000 RMB. It would be difficult to get companies to pay for the expensive recycling of solar panels without spreading such costs evenly to consumers. Therefore, breaking through existing technologies to reduce recycling costs, or directly processing and reusing recycled solar panels, are two breakthrough directions.
There is also a "reuse" scheme in the recycling of chemical batteries, which is called "Second-life battery use". Some recycling start-ups recycle old battery packs of the same model, conduct quality inspection and screening, reassemble the reusable battery units, and add BMS for continued use. As a result, existing battery structures can be fully utilized before chemical components are recycled, thereby reducing recycling costs throughout the battery's life cycle. However, in this solution, upgrading and improving the BMS system will be more troublesome, and the accuracy of screening needs to be determined.
Image source: Shutterstock Dave W
|?Pollution caused by recycling
Recycling technology exists in this province to protect the environment and reduce pollution, so recycling What to do about the pollution generated during the process?
One way is to achieve direct technological breakthroughs. For example, the solar panels we mentioned above: Most solar panels are made of glass, as well as silicon wafers, EVA films, metal bus bars, etc., but they still contain toxic elements including cadmium, lead, and antimony, whether directly Landfilling or discharging toxic elements directly into wastewater during the recycling process can cause environmental pollution.
Many laboratories and universities are working hard to improve chemical recovery rates and reduce wastewater, waste liquid or dust pollution, and have achieved many technological breakthroughs.
Similarly, lithium battery recycling will also produce certain pollution. Princeton NuEnergy, a recycling start-up from Princeton University, has successfully brought the patented technology of lithium battery cleaning treatment into the industry and daily life in response to this problem. . This technology uses a clean and innovative process to regenerate cathode and anode materials without completely decomposing the compounds, and thus received a Clean Tech Seed Grant from CSIT (Commissionon Science, Innovation, and Technology) with US$75,000 in August 2021. bonus.
Another idea is to fundamentally change the selection of materials and develop degradable alternative materials. For example, we all know that plastic pollution is very serious now. Our country also issued a plastic restriction order in the early years. Therefore, many milk tea shops only provide paper straws. However, we often hear from milk tea lovers around us that "the straws become soft before finishing the milk tea." complain.
New York startup LOLIWARE is developing seaweed materials to make disposable straws that are stronger than paper straws. Just think about the saturation level of domestic milk tea shops and the expansion trend of globalization. If there are low-cost alternative straws made of degradable materials, the market profits will still be very impressive.
|?Design for Recycling
Design for Recycling is an ecological design strategy that can systematically help design teams create environmentally friendly products and reduce waste disposal costs. Even complete a closed-loop supply chain. Commonly used strategies are shown in the figure below: optimizing material selection, improving process technology, optimizing transportation systems, reducing pollution and waste during product use, optimizing product life cycles, and designing "End-of-life System" for product scrapping.
The wheel of eco-design strategies (Crul and Dieh, 2009).
When it comes to companies that do excellent recycling design, Apple and SpaceX have to be mentioned.
Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social affairs, once said: “Advanced recycling technology will definitely become an important link in the electronics industry supply chain. Apple is exploring new ways to promote the entire industry. Advance development..."
Apple encourages users to actively recycle and dispose of their old devices by promoting old-for-new recycling programs. In 2018 alone, 7.8 million Apple devices were refurbished, avoiding more than 48,000 tons of waste. Electronic waste flows to landfills; in terms of material selection, 100% recycled tin and 100% recycled aluminum are used to create key components and body shells, which greatly reduces the carbon footprint of the model. At the same time, Apple has also launched a new generation of mechanized processing system Daisy to dismantle and recycle various important materials, realizing a closed-loop supply chain for some precious materials.
SpaceX is also leading the way on the road of recycling, and on December 21, 2021, it historically achieved its 100th rocket recycling. From the first reuse of rockets in 2017 to the end of 2021, it has "... saved at least two to three billion US dollars in launch costs, and set a record for the lowest launch price per kilogram in the world (SpaceX is about US$1,410/kg, and other launchers have the lowest 5,000 US dollars/kg)” (Cheng Yizhi, 2022)
Achieving such a high-precision vertical landing recovery rocket requires not only vertical take-off and landing technology, vector thrust technology, secondary ignition, throttle control technology, pneumatic control, materials The perfect combination of top technologies such as engineering is a reflection of outstanding innovation and ultra-high execution, which ultimately contributed to SpaceX’s space status that other launchers are coveted today.
Conclusion: It takes a lot of time and experience for large companies to make changes, but flexible and fast-moving product startups can directly incorporate recycling and other issues into the production and R&D process during iterations, greatly reducing costs; Start-up companies that focus on recycling and environmental protection are also easy to receive policy support and public support, and have a huge market and broad prospects.
We at Free Founder Technology have always paid attention to and supported green technology. We hope that more start-ups will pay attention to environmental protection while also actively exploring its huge potential market, not only doing things that are beneficial to the earth's environment, but also Can earn profits.