Circular Economy: The eco-friendly alchemy of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries and mobile phones.

 

 

 

When climate change leads to global warming, global industrial development continues, accompanied with a significant increase in electricity demand causing a corresponding rise in carbon dioxide emission. Over the past 120 years, carbon emissions have raised by 700%; letting global warming increasingly severe. The warming caused by the greenhouse effect profoundly impacts the climate. For example, in 2019-2020, wildfires in Australia led to the extinction of endemic species. In addition, the wildfire caused a significant loss of biodiversity in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. Moreover, large scale floods in low-lying areas, displaced more than 100 thousand people.

 

 

In the era of rapid technological advancement, electronic devices with dazzling features are constantly introduced, causing an unprecedented surge in consumer purchases. This surge in 3C consumer products manufacturing has led to the depletion of resources and energy consumptions, resulting in high carbon emissions and unsafety production methods, which have severely impacted the environment and human health. According to United Nations statistics, in 2019, more than 54million tons of electronic waste were generated, equivalent to the volume of 77 Taipei 101. Although governments worldwide promote urban mining and the circular economy, they often overlook the environmental and safety issues during the recycling processes. The traditional recycling method involves high corrosive aqua regia and high toxic cyanide, both pose significant risks to operators.

 

 

 

Hsu Ching-Hsiang, Chairman of UWin Resource Regeneration, has introduced a green chemical recycling process, focusing on safety, low carbon emissions, and eco-friendly. He has developed a non-toxic and high selective gold stripping technology based on concepts of geology, biomimicry, and reverse engineering. This innovation has earned the Gold Medal Award of Pittsburgh International Invention Exhibition and holds multiple global patents. This technology has gained the attention of prominent international brands such as Apple, Dell, HP, Canon, and others. Thanks to high selective gold stripping, the purification of gold and wastewater treatment are simplified, high purity, efficiency, and profitability. It challenges the traditional notion that recycling processes come at a high cost.

 

 

In the dissembling and sorting processes of electronic products, other than gold recovery from chips and motherboards, it is essential to properly recycle lithium batteries. Through physical processes such as discharge, fragmentation, pulverization, cyclone separation, magnetic screening, and eddy current separation, which can produce so called “black mass”. Black mass undergoes further environmental processes, including extraction of lithium, cobalt, and nickel, filtration, vacuum distillation, electrolytic reduction separation, and others. After running through these processes, high purity recycled materials such as lithium carbonate, cobalt sulfate, and nickel sulfate are yield, which can be used to manufacture new lithium-ion batteries. This approach truly incorporates the environmental responsibility in circular economy.

 

 

Chairman Hsu often emphasizes the promotion of green chemistry education, innovative thinking, and ESG influence. Focusing on the global electronic waste management, Taiwan can independently control key materials, provide safe and eco-friendly procedures, and promotion of green manufacturing processes education. All of these initiatives showcase Taiwan’s transformation to the world. Environmental friendliness has become a global trend, with global green capital expenditures of more than 6 trillion US dollars.

 

 

 

Finally, Chairman Hsu uses a pyramid structure to explain the concept of enterprise’s responsibility. At the bottom layer is the environmentally friendly manufacturing processes, assisting customers a more eco-friendly and secure manner in resource regeneration. In the middle layer is the expansion of cultural creation, elevating recycling to an aesthetic level and creating a higher value. At the top layer is the cultivation of education, promoting green chemistry and gradually embracing the correct concept to endure culture of enterprise perpetually.

 

 

Under prosperity development of new era in electronic technology, it is crucial to understand the importance of eco-friendly especially transforming the idea of what others perceive as waste into valuable resources. We all share the responsibility to make our environment better as there is only a single home for us all!