The Process

I noticed while going through my previous posts I had not fully gone into the proper process of recycling E-waste, so in this post I will attempt to break down the steps of properly breaking down E-Waste.

In Mississauga, a city outside of Toronto, Sims Recycling Solutions is known to have one of the most advanced recycling methods in the business. Sims Recycling Solutions has a new innovative way to deal with CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) monitors and has been employing this method to efficiently and properly recycle.

The first step is to dismantle the monitor or TV screen by opening the casing and separating the glass screen portion from the casing. After the separation of the glass the inner CRT glass tube is removed from the plastic component of the casing and then sent into machine that breaks down the glass into smaller pieces. During this process dust is created which is drafted out of the machine by a air tube. This dust is made up of phosphorus materials that make up the CRT tube. There is also a small amount of glass powder in this dust. This dust that is created is also disposed of in an environmentally safe procedure. Once the dismantled components reach the other end of the machine the shredded down components are sent through the next stage of the process. In the second part of the process, ferrous materials are separated from the stream of shredded materials by electromagnets. The separated ferrous materials are then placed into large containers and are prepped for resale. After the separation of the ferrous materials has been completed the next step in the process is to separate non ferrous materials from the glass materials. This is achieved through what i understood as an Eddy Current. What happens during this process is the stream of shredded materials is subjected to an alternating source of positive and negative electromagnets which causes the non-ferrous materials to jump/leap away while the glass materials just fall straight down. Once the separation process is completed the non-ferrous materials is placed into large bins and also prepped for resale. The following step in the recycling process is to process the remaining glass materials. The stream of glass consists of leaded and unleaded glass. The inside of CRT is coated with phosphors which are cleaned during this stage (washing stage). Fans extract Iron Oxides, glass dust and phosphorous dust out of the air and this is sent to another part of the facility to be disposed of properly. At end of the extraction process clean glass is produced which is then sent to be sorted. This brings us to the final stage of the sorting process, which is to sort the leaded glass from the unleaded glass. This is accomplished by sending the stream of glass under a sensor that determines which glass is leaded versus unleaded. This information is stored on a computer and when leaded or unleaded glass reaches the end of the conveyor belt the computer knows to separate the different kinds. The separated glass is then packaged and prepped for resale.
This process explains the method used to recycle a CRT monitor or tv however it can also be used to recycle other electronic waste such as computers, cellphones, tablets, etc.

Below are some images of the process that explained above.