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A Smart Cloud-based System for the WEEE
Recovery/Recycling
Xi Vincent Wang
Department of Production Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Brinellvägen 68, 114 28 Stockholm, Sweden
wangxi@kth.se
Brenda N. Lopez N
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (SKLESPC),
Room 813, School of the Environment, Tsinghua University,
Haidian District, Beijing, China, 100084
loujl10@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn
Winifred Ijomah
Design, Manufacture and Engineering Management, Faculty of Engineering, (DMEM)
University of Strathclyde, UK
131 Rotten Row, Glasgow G4 0NG, United Kingdom
w.l.ijomah@strath.ac.uk
Lihui Wang
Department of Production Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Brinellvägen 68, 114 28 Stockholm, Sweden
lihuiw@kth.se
Jinhui Li
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (SKLESPC),
Room 804, School of the Environment, Tsinghua University
Haidian District, Beijing, China, 100084
jinhui@tsinghua.edu.cn
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ABSTRACT
Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) is both valuable and harmful since it contains a large
number of profitable and hazardous materials and elements at the same time. At component level, many
parts of the discarded equipment are still functional and recoverable. Thus it is necessary to develop a
distributed and intelligent system to support WEEE component recovery and recycling. In recent years, the
Cloud concept has gained increasing popularity since it provides a service-oriented architecture that
integrates various resources over the network. Cloud Manufacturing systems are proposed world-wide to
support operational manufacturing processes. In this research, Cloud Manufacturing is further extended to
the WEEE recovery and recycling context. A Cloud-based WEEE Recovery system is developed to provide
modularized recovery services on the Cloud. A data management system is developed as well, which
maintains the knowledge throughout the product lifecycle. A product tracking mechanism is also proposed
with the help of the Quick Respond code method.
INTRODUCTION
The amount of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) has grown
significantly in recent years, due to increased Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE)
and its shorter lifecycle. Different types of EEE are principally classified as shown in Table
1. The replacements of these devices (e.g. televisions, computers, cell phones, etc.) are
more frequent than ever before because of the fast-changing market demand and
planned obsolescence. New products offer attractive functionalities and convenience to
the consumer, but also push the in-service products from Middle-Of-Life (MOL) to End-
Of-Life (EOL) phase. From the Manufacturers’ perspectives, shorter lifecycle brings
greater profits and keeps their positions on the competitive market. However, it also
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creates huge volume of WEEE that leads to global environment issues on many scales.
According to the statistics of the US Environmental Protection Agency [1], 438 million
new electronic devices were sold in 2009 in America, which represented a doubling of
sales from 1997. 2.37 million tons of them reached EOL in 2009, but only 25% of them
were collected for recycling. Among different kinds of electrical and electronic products,
the recycling rate of mobile devices (cell phones, smart phones, PDAs) was lowest, even
less than 9%.
Table 1. Principal EEE Categories
Category
Examples
Information and Communication
Computer, tablet, mobile phone
Large household appliances
Refrigerator, air conditioner, washing
machine
Small household appliances
Iron, dryer, rice cooker
Lighting equipment
Electric light bulb, household luminary
Electrical and electronic tools
Volt-Ohm-Millimetre, soldering iron
Toys, leisure and sports equipment
Coin slot machines, car racing set
Automatic dispensers
Water dispenser, coffee machine
Medical equipment
Ultrasound machine, heart-lung machine
Thus it is important to manage and control WEEE with practical strategies. In the
EU, handling WEEE is a high priority for all member states. Countries such as
Switzerland, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, and Germany already
have an established Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for WEEE. In the case of
WEEE facilities, many developed countries including the USA, Europe and Japan have
mature technologies for the treatment of this waste stream [2]. However, in developing
countries primitive activities predominate , as in the case of the largest e-waste recycling
place in Guiyu, China where the practices include: manually classification and
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dismantling of e-waste, manual separation and solder recovery for mounted printed
circuit board, precious metal extraction by acid, among others [3]. Also the informal
sector has a predominant presence in these activities, as in the case of Nigeria, Ghana
and Thailand [2]. Traditionally, the recycling of WEEE mainly stays at material level. The
target of recycling is either separating hazardous elements from resources, e.g. mercury
and brominated flame retardant or extracting valuable materials that can be utilized
again, e.g. gold, silver, plastics, steel and aluminium. The risk in WEEE treatment is
largely due to its toxicity. During WEEE recycling, three groups of substances may be
released: the constituents of the EEE, the substances used in the recycling techniques,
and the by-products formed during transformation of the original constituents [4, 5].
The toxicity of these substances is related to the presence of heavy metals and
halogenated flame retardants. When treated by poorly controlled processes, it leads to
damage and risk in multiple scales: soil and sediment pollution [6, 7], water [8], air [9],
and human health [10, 11]. Additionally, the pollution may also infiltrate into the
environment directly through municipal solid waste disposal [12].
The traditional path of WEEE is limited to recycling, for the sake of obtaining
raw materials. In practice, it is possible to treat WEEE as used products, before it is
considered as a discharged waste [13]. The EOL processes include the secondary market
processing and component recovery (repair, reconditioning, and remanufacturing) or
material recovery (recycling) [14]. According to the EU WEEE directive, after electronics
reach the end phase of their lifecycle, they should be filtered based on their status based
on their economic and functional potentials. Then the WEEE is processed via different
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paths after proper treatment, but principally WEEE is recycled. In practice, it is also
important to consider other EOL processing routes, for example the BS 8887 standard
serials give six EOL routes as follows, along with the likely change at warranty level
compared with the original product [15], including reuse, remanufacture, recondition,
repurpose, recycle, and dispose. In this roadmap, WEEE are handled not only as a waste,
but also as a special category of product that can be re-used through an extended
lifecycle [13]. Although the term WEEE indicates the equipment as a waste, a huge
proportion of the equipment can be defined as Used Electrical and Electronic Equipment
(UEEE), which plays an important role for component recovery or extended usage. These
activities are at a higher level than recycling in the environmental hierarchy of EOL
strategies [14]. Considering this, such understanding can be included in the new
perception of the EEE lifecycle. It is possible to put UEEE back to the market via proper
recovery processes and treatments (Figure 1.).
EEE
WEEE
Recycling UEEE
Raw material
(plastic, non-ferrous
and ferrous metals)
Hazardous material Ordinary Waste
Recovery
Remanufacture
Recondition
Repare
Re-used EEE
BOL
MOL
EOL
Figure 1. WEEE Physical Flow and UEEE
Recovery activities aim to get usage of the components from UEEE, before they
are disposed as waste, i.e. repair, reconditioning and remanufacturing. The assessment
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