International Journal of Waste Resources

Metal Exposure during Recycling of Electronic Waste Based Upon the Industrial Effluents

Niladri Peters^* Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
^*Correspondence: Niladri Peters, Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, Email:

Received: 15-Sep-2022, Manuscript No. IJWR-22-18846; Editor assigned: 19-Sep-2022, Pre QC No. IJWR-22-18846(PQ); Reviewed: 10-Oct-2022, QC No. IJWR-22-18846; Revised: 17-Oct-2022, Manuscript No. IJWR-22-18846(R); Published: 24-Oct-2022, DOI: 10.35248/ 2252-5211.22.12.495

Description

Although metals are theoretically always recyclable, due to the limitations that are imposed by societal standards, product design, recycling methods, and thermodynamics of separation, recycling is occasionally ineffective or completely nonexistent. However, the recycling rates are currently fair low as a result of increasing complexity of items and dearth of some important elements, which makes it challenging to recover metal at a profit.

The increased collection of waste items, by improved design for recycling, and expanded use of contemporary recycling techniques are the most advantageous steps that could raise recycling rates. We are currently a long way from a closed-loop material system as a global society. The development, for total closure of the material cycle will not be achieved due to a variety of obstacles, for not the technological ones.

The development of novel technologies that enable an economical and environmentally friendly metal recovery from primary and secondary resources is required due to the rising demand for various essential metals as a result of the development of new technologies, particularly in the so-called "low carbon technologies."

Along with bettering the extraction and processing of ores, recycling of strategic metals must be made a priority. There is great fear that, within a few years, the demand for some essential components may outpace the supply, prompting the development of new technologies and strategies to meet the needs of business and society. The series of tasks leading to the recovery of materials from garbage is known as the recycling value chain. These operations include:

• Collection, the beginning of any waste management process;

• Preparation for material recovery, which covers manual and/or mechanical operations and physical sorting; and

• The material recovery, which consists of chemical, physical and/or metallurgical operations, but does not include incineration for energy recovery and the reprocessing into materials that are to be used as fuel.

The recycling of value chain ends when the waste is reprocessed into products or materials, which does not require any further processing whether for the original or other purposes. In other words, the final outputs of a recycling chain are metals and materials in a sufficiently pure quality that are capable for replacing primary metals (i.e., originating from mining chains) as input raw materials are used for manufacturing of new products.

The modern biotechnologies can contribute to solve some of the problems related to metal recycling and making a distinction between common, specialty, and precious metals. These approaches exploit the natural properties of organisms, like biocompounds and biomolecules inorder to interact with minerals, materials, metals or metal ions such as surface attachment, mineral dissolution, transformation and metal complex formation. Other modern genetic approaches are made possible by synthetic biology. This enables the intelligent design of new chemicals. This article presents recent developments in the fields of bioleaching, biosorption, bioreduction and bioflotation and their use in metal recovery from various wastes. Only a few of these developments are currently commercialized. The main limitations are at high and low cost elemental selectivity that are compared to conventional methods.

Conclusion

Future developments in these disciplines will be pushed by interdisciplinary approaches, the fusion of various technologies, the inclusion of cutting edge genetic techniques, and the consideration of currently available but untapped natural resources. However, because of the limitations of conventional methods and the growing environmental consciousness, creative recycling tactics are required to maintain a circular economy. For such complicated items, there are now sophisticated metallurgical recycling processes available, making it technically possible to achieve circularity for a significant portion of their metals. The circular economy package can be very helpful in promoting excellent circular management.