Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Delhi!

CHL471: Process Equipment Design & Economics

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CYCLE 1: Treatment of personal electronics waste in NCR region!
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The design project allo2ed to cycle 1 focuses on how to tackle the growing menace
of e-waste, with specic emphasis on Delhi and restric>ng the solu>on to Laptops,
Desktops, Tablets and Mobiles. The project would primarily provide an economically
feasible engineering solu1on to reducing the propor>on of e-waste in landlls, recycle and
reuse e-products so as to maximise the u>lity/ end value of the product with giving due
regard to environmental concerns.

Our team (of 4 subgroups) has iden1ed 4 broad categories, on which to
channelize/ base our respec>ve eorts upon, one being the es1ma1on of e-waste and the
other 3 being the broad components into which an electronic gadget can be broken down
into, namely

1. (Subgroup: 1): Electrical components which generally comprises of the mother boards,
PCBs etc.
2. (Subgroup: 2): Plas1cs which go into the manufacturing of the body. (like ABS, nylon,
etc. which are injec>on moulded to get desired shape.)
4. (Subgroup: 4): Screen of the gadget which comprises of a number of metals (Iron,
Copper, Indium etc.), plas>cs (specic to screens), glasses, LCDs, CRTs etc.

Subgroup 3: This subgroup would deal with the Es1ma1on of the e-waste stream
which you revolve around crea>on of a regression model for the same. This would include
the appraisal of the present levels of waste along with the future trends, using Mul1variate
Input Output (MIO) Analysis. We have talked to various registered e-waste operators in
Delhi/NCR (example: Earth Science Recycle (P) Ltd., TIC Group India (P) Ltd., AOero
Recycling (P) Ltd, Greenspace) and they have agreed to help us with the es>ma>on part to
some extent. We plan to carry out the analysis on two fronts: one being the approximate
numbers of laptops, computers, mobiles etc recycled, reused, landlled, shelved on an
yearly basis and the second being the amount of plas>cs, metals and other waste
components. AXer this, we can use MIO Analysis based on Sales-Stock-Lifespan model to
simulate the amounts of e-waste at a certain point of >me in future.

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The ac>on plan developed to tackle the problem is as follows:

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PHASE 1:
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The above three broad categories (including es>ma>on) have been allocated to 3 Sub-
groups, the members of which further look, in sub -groups of 2, into:

1. The current and past technologies which have been or are being used to recycle or
reuse that par>cular component with specic emphasis on the feasibility (economically) of
all the technologies. (example: selec>ve dissolu>on of commingled plas>cs aXer shredding,
washing and drying.)

2. The poten1al technologies which are under scru>ny for the past few years or which
have the poten>al but have not yet been implemented on a large scale. This would also
include a feasibility/economic analysis. (example: High-end recycled plas>cs can be
combined with virgin resins and used in manufacturing new products. But it is s>ll a
challenge to produce as pure and clear ake product(used during the process) as possible.)

3. Dismantling technology, environmental problems (in general) and change in

composi1on of waste stream with >me (in tandem with Group dealing with es>ma>on),
pertaining to the components in the broad categorisa>on (Example: since the advent of
LCDs, CRTs (in 2007 sales of LCDs television surpassed that of CRT based) are been
discarded at an exponen>al rate, hence domina>ng in waste stream).

The above work plan has been wrought up to essen>ally iden>fy (group wise) the
key technology/processes being incorporated in both formal and informal sectors to target
the specic aforemen>oned components, select the best process among them (bearing in
mind the exibility required to address the changes in the composi1on of future waste
stream) and then integrate all the individual processes together to obtain an economically
feasible process plant.

The work plan would remain eec>ve un>l process iden>ca>on, op>miza>on and
data from es>ma>on has been derived, aXer which tasks would be allo2ed afresh to the
groups based on the nal process design structure we zero in upon as the best bet and
work upon the process ow shee>ng.

PS: This report covers the work distribution and action plan till the mid-term
evaluation since the subsequent endeavors would depend on outcome of Phase 1.!

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The best thing about the above design is that it would enable us to work in a company like
environment where each groups or rather individuals work would be dependent on that of
the others. We succeed as a team and we fail as a team.