CHINA PARTICUOLOGY Vol. 4, No.

2, 47-59, 2006

z Review

CHALLENGES FOR PROCESS INDUSTRIES IN RECYCLING*

Lothar Reh
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zuerich
Institute of Process Engineering, CH-8092 Zuerich, Switzerland
E-mail: reh@ipe.mavt.ethz.ch

Abstract Increasing population and individual wealth have led to a higher demand for energy and raw material re-
sources as well as for steady improvement of processing technology in view of efficient use of resources and avoiding
emissions in production and recycling processes. Present situation and future trend of recycling processing are dis-
cussed by examples from the aluminium and steel industries, recycling of cars and post-consumer municipal recovery.
The importance of more intense observance of thermodynamic laws and of a 4E strategy Economy, Energy, Environ-
ment and Education is outlined.
Keywords environment, sustainability, resources, recycling, recovery, re-integration, global cycle, entropy, secon-
dary materials

1. Introduction climate change, growing burdens have developed on the

recycling processing industries. Despite the high complex-
Recycling technologies are as old as humanity and have ity of the recycling systems, despite the many still unclear
been developed in many different ways. With the industrial definitions of the notion Recycling and despite the
revolution recycling started to grow as an own sector of worldwide differing and sometimes unbalanced legislation
industry. Redundant metals, ferrous or non ferrous, be- concerning economy, ecology and social liabilities, the
came raw materials for the metallurgical industries. Used author tries to identify at least some important challenges
paper was reduced to its original pulp condition and the to the future of this nascent industry.
fibres were formed into new paper. Today the recycling
industry has become strongly internationally oriented and 2. Environment, Sustainability and Re-
is responsible for collecting, sorting, separating and up-
grading a vast range of materials special by-products of sources
the manufacturing industries and end-of-life consumer The interactions between humans striving for more wel-
goods as well to secondary raw materials of strict speci- fare within their and their global society, the steadily grow-
fications. Steelworks, non ferrous and glass smelters, pa- ing technically shaped environment by migration to the
per mills, textile industries, plastics industry as well as cities and the natural environment partly shaped by agri-
building material and construction companies are supplied culture are manifold and extremely complex (Fig. 1).
by international trade and other logistic systems. Parallel
hereto and with industrial growth, a once-through mentality
in using resources has, too, developed and become more
or less pronounced in different parts of the world.
In the third quarter of the last century, the concerns
about environmental impacts of municipal and industrial
activities by emissions and disposal of all kind of wastes
grew considerably and it became the period, during which
in Europe and especially in Switzerland the idea of recy-
cling came more into focus. In 1993 the Swiss Federal
Materials Testing Institute (EMPA), Peak Ltd. and OrgExpo
Geneva, in cooperation with UNEP, organized the first
international recycling conference R93 at the Geneva
Exhibition Centre. Under the auspices of the Swiss State
Secretary of Science, the 3R conferences Recycling, Fig. 1 Interactions between human, environment and atmosphere.
Recovery, Re-Integration became the place for interna-
tional interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and know-how Industrial activities, traffic, housing and farming create
concerning all aspects of recycling. It has traditionally been many fold emissions to the atmosphere. There they are
based on the three pillars of Science, Industry and Legis- mixed by turbulence with the competing emissions of the
lation. natural system. They are brought back to surface by the
With increasing awareness of sustainability and global global water cycle via precipitation as immissions. Whereas

* The article is based on the authors keynote lecture at R`05 conference.

48 CHINA PARTICUOLOGY Vol. 4, No. 2, 2006

in the 80s of the past century, control of environmental pol- tons/year of sand and gravel for civil construction. The total
lution had been in the foreground of global concern, toward commodity production reaches nearly 37 billion tons/year,
the end of the century and still more recently is the concern which are taken from our natural resources reserves, not
about sustainability of our global system in view of climate counting for large quantities of mining tailings remaining in
change and depletion of resources. place. As a consequence, huge material quantities are
being transported over widely different distances all around
the globe to the primary processing plants, e.g., power
stations, refineries, cement, metallurgical or chemical
plants. Not included here is wood, for which a figure of 300
million cubic meters/year was found, and the statistically
uncertain global quantities of biomass use.
Two conclusions may be drawn here: First, economy,
energy consumption and environmental constraints of
handling large tonnages of resources have a great impact
on future resources use. Second, the broad variety of dif-
Fig. 2 Fundamental global developments. ferent commodities makes it very difficult to find common
strategies, especially when different suppliers are com-
It is not intended to discuss the pros and cons of sus- peting in the market. The energy commodities in total are
tainability here. However, before looking into recycling well served by the cooperative global strategies of Interna-
processes in more detail, it is worthwhile to take a look at tional Energy Agency (IEA) and World Energy Council
some fundamental global developments in numbers (WEC), supported by the strategies of global institutions
(Fig. 2). like Shell, British Petroleum, etc. and by World Coal Insti-
We realize the rapid growth of world population over the tute (WCI). There are required, however, certainly more
past centuries following the statistics of the World Energy cooperative efforts and information exchange between the
Council (WEC) and its further prognosis ( Statistics WEC, different resources using industries on a global scale.
1993), the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere, gained by
ice core drilling (Friedli et al., 1986) and by continuous
measurements of the meteorological station at Mauna Loa
in Hawaii (Keeling & Whorf, n.d.), as well as the global
primary energy supply following the statistics of the Inter-
national Energy Agency (International Energy Agency,
2005). In 2003 around 6 billion people consumed primary
energy of about 10 billion tons of oil equivalent (toe) and
contributed heavily to a CO2 concentration of 370 parts per
million (ppm) in global atmosphere. Even when scientists
have been aware of these dynamic increases at least since
the past 30 years, global society up to now has found no
way yet to decrease remarkably the gradient of these
hardly sustainable developments. Only primary energy
supply seems to grow linearly instead of exponentially,
maybe due to more efficient primary energy use? In any
case a big question mark still dominates the three shown
developments in the decades to come! Further great efforts
to stabilize world population, to use primary energy more
efficiently and to reduce CO2 emissions are urgently
needed.
How does the situation look for our primary materials? To
get an impression, we are choosing the statistics of BGR,
the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Re-
sources, Hannover, Germany, which is closely observing
the global production of resources (Mineral Statistics,
2003). The main commodities for year 2003 are presented
by weight in Fig. 3 as a pyramid, with different groups:
precious materials, energy commodities, industrial miner-
als and metals indicated by different colours. The pyramid
using a log-scale starts on top with diamonds, production
~30 tons/year, and has a basis formed by 18 billion Fig. 3 Mineral commodities pyramid for 2003 (Mineral Statistics, 2003).
 Reh: Challenges for Process Industries in Recycling 49

around 580 million tons of CO2 to atmosphere. The de-

velopment of non-ferrous metals is shown in the graphs c)
and d). These well priced metals need for their production
from ores a high specific energy input for reduction from
the ores. So they are of great interest for recovery by re-
cycling, which only needs a fraction of the energy input
used in primary production.
Due to many different industries and scientific disciplines
involved in material resources no complete overview con-
cerning forecast of future consumption and common
strategy exists. In a European joint research project for
Very Long term Energy-Environment Modelling, called
VLEEM 2, several recognized fundamental research or-
Fig. 4 Dynamics of different primary materials global use during the ganizations and the University of Utrecht have created a
second half of last century until 1998 (BGR, 1998). forecast of global commodity production for the next cen-
tury. It shows high stresses on basic resources. No indus-
Looking at the timely development of selected primary trial partner is participating in this joint research work up to
materials resources during the second half of last century, now, however (Detailed results, 2002).
we recognize that the use of global resources develops
very dynamically, too (Fig. 4). Here four groups with dif-
3. Process Engineering and Recycling
ferent scales of production tonnages are shown. As ex-
pected, the energy commodities, coal, oil and natural gas 3.1 General processing tasks
are dominating in the graph with the 5 000 million tons/year Having identified the scope of global production of re-
scale. However in this group a) (in upper left of Fig. 4) we sources, we now turn to the processing tasks of recycling
already find cement and steel. Both commodities had a in a general way. In all mass transforming production
large increase in recent years. Global cement production processes, treating resources or manufacturing, we use as
reached 1 944 million tons/year in 2003 and is growing input besides raw materials and energy the free com-
strongly further. World steel production grew during the modities water and air, which are abundant and available
period 2001 to 2005 from 850 to 1 072 million tons/year.
in nature. Environmental protection puts strict limits on
The development of both commodities is strongly driven by
process engineering which can be handled by process
the rapidly rising demand in China. Per capita steel supply
integrated environmental measures in the production
in China has grown between 1975 and 2003 seven fold,
process itself and by additive destruction and cleaning
leading to a Chinese fraction of world steel supply of more
processes as schematically shown in Fig. 5. Frequently the
than 25%! The very important influence of steel recycling
mass transforming process is accompanied by a direct
will be discussed in more detail later. Cement as a secon-
internal recycling process, for instance, dust recycling in a
dary product from limestone, clay, aluminium and iron
cement clinker plant. There also may be produced one or
minerals finally ends up as binder in a mixture with sand,
several by-products, which is typical for chemical produc-
gravel and slag in concrete as the finally utilized product.
tion plants. By-products often are not desirable economi-
Used concrete, however, when crushed and fractionated,
cally, however, since they couple the process with other
is readily applied as a substitute for gravel and helps sav-
production lines or another market.
ing the latter resources. The cement production process
utilizing organic residues as a fraction of its clinker fur-
nace fuel and inorganic residues as additive to clinker
and/or concrete plays a very important role in recycling
processing. Process improvements, using as much as
possible residual materials in clinker and concrete pro-
duction and reducing the fraction of cement in concrete,
also may lead to a remarkable relief in the CO2 emission
burden of cement industry (Saunders & Senba, 2005;
Imamura, 2002).
In graph b) with 200 million tons/year scale, together
with the inorganic salts and commodities also the trend for
global production of polymers is included. The 200 million
tons/year production in 2002 of polymers, including also Fig. 5 Environmental tasks of process engineering.
fibres, glues, dispersions and paints, consumes with an
average specific consumption of 88 GJ/ton about 4% of Minimizing harmful emissions and harmful effects, such
global primary energy and emits with 2.9 t CO2/ton yearly as noise and reduced safety as well as optimizing the
50 CHINA PARTICUOLOGY Vol. 4, No. 2, 2006

process internal recycling by process (or production) inte-

grated measures lead to efficient processes. These in
many cases yield the lowest total operating cost option.
Since the end of the eighties of last century for example,
the Swiss and German chemical industries have thus
steadily increased energy and materials efficiency and
reduced industrial waste remarkably. High-quality products
are very much dependent on steady high quality of the
input streams, especially of the raw materials. They require
efficient analytical control, the more continuous the better.
Off-streams of the production processes have to be
cleaned by add-on destruction and cleaning process steps
such as deNOx and deSOx units as well as absorbers,
scrubbers and dust filters. Only clean off-gas, clean water
and disposable solids strictly following legislation should
leave the processes. The add-on plants for smaller proc-
ess units can be a very high economic burden because of
Fig. 6 Environmentally ideal recycling economy.
uncertain stricter future emission limits and consequently
need more expensive analytical control, too.
Many environmentalists may have the dream of an ideal reduction of the necessary resources input, the gaseous,
recycling economy with the lowest possible input of re- liquid and solid off-streams may and have to be reduced
sources consisting of the three phases of matter, gas, liq- considerably.
uid and solid, into our technically shaped environment The processing task for the overall system remains to
(Fig. 6). In many countries, for instance in Canada, Austra- clean gaseous and liquid off-streams and to convert the
lia, New Zealand, government authorities, backed by a resulting solid residues into a leach-proof state below tol-
strong world wide operating Zero Waste movement, have erable emission limits, if atmosphere, water cycle and soil
established medium termed Zero Waste programs (Zero shall be kept in sustainable condition. However, from this
Waste, 2001; Chen & Houng, 2004). They are establishing dream our global society and its economy are still far, far
resource recovery activities for a period until 2010 to 2020, away!
maybe even realizing the aim to be out of reach. However, 3.2 Global cycle of resources
there is no mass transforming process without losses. And
there is also no permanent hold-up in the technologically There is no doubt, that in future an economically, ener-
formed environment system. The rule More in More out getically and ecologically ingeniously shaped global cycle
following mass conservation laws applies. Nevertheless in of the most inorganic resources will be an important aim of
a recycling economy under condition of equal consumption society. The present status of the global cycle of resources
compared to a once through economy, depending on is shown in the simplified sketch of Fig. 7.

Fig. 7 Global cycle of resources.

 Reh: Challenges for Process Industries in Recycling
In nature there exists a large but not infinite supply
storage of minerals and fossil energy resources of old
geological age. These are recovered in majority from large
scale mines and have to be beneficiated for transport,
whereas the unavoidable tailings remain in place. These
have to be disposed of in an environmentally tolerable way,
for instance, to re-cultivate the mines. The resources are
located mainly in developing countries, whose economy is
based to a high degree on the export of raw materials. Due
to uncertain political conditions some of them are unreli-
able suppliers. A worldwide net of resources trading com-
pensates and provides security of supply. The raw material
exporting countries in recent decades increasingly in-
vested in industrial up-grading processes like smelting,
semi finished and even consumer good production, in or-
der to create a more labour intensive industrial structure.
The minerals and energy raw materials to a large part
have to be transported over long distances to locations
with industrial infrastructure for smelting or production of
semi finished products as well as to power plants for elec-
tric energy supply and to refineries and chemical industry.
For instance, iron ore pellets are transported from Brazil
and Australia to Europe, China or Japan. Economically
these transports are performed at low cost in large vessels
with the lowest possible number of costly loading steps.
Huge raw material treatment plants of more than a million
tons of daily capacity preferably have sites at the coast or
at least at locations with excellent river traffic or railway
connections. Following the processing laws of economy of
scale they produce cheaper commodities than small
processing units. Big plants grow better at the water site
and at locations of abundant cheap energy supply!
In addition, nature provides all kinds of plants as wood,
grass and fibres, from a short term storage of biomass to
the producing industry as a renewable resource. Under
Fig. 8 Material flow model for German cycle of synthetic carbon products. (Patel, 1999)
51
influence of photosynthesis and polymerisation biomass is
steadily reproduced from CO2 and H2O from the global
atmospheric cycle. Biomass, due to its comparably low
material and energy density, is very sensitive in regard to
cost and energy consumption of transport. Consequently
further industrial use has limited production unit capacities
and preferable location close to biomass culturing areas.
The production or manufacturing industry, under input of
energy, labour and information, processes the raw or pri-
mary materials and upgrades them by combining different
materials into short living consumer goods, like packing
materials, textiles, refrigerators, furniture and cars and into
long lasting investment goods, such as structural elements
for buildings, railways and production plants. Through
broad distribution in space by sophisticated logistics and
marketing these products then enter the consumer stor-
age for widely varying periods of use. These periods may
vary from days to several decades, and even centuries as
historical buildings well demonstrate. By ageing and wear,
depreciation of product to waste occurs. However, this
misleadingly called waste today has increasingly to be
seen as a valuable resource, substituting primary materi-
als.
From here on in the cycle, is happening what is called
waste management, the most critical step on the way
from a once-through to a recycling economy! The system
today is characterized by four routes. A small fraction of
consumer goods, for instance by charity collections and
used car exports, finds its way directly back into the con-
sumer storage for re-use. The main stream of the widely
distributed goods, including many commercial residues, is
collected in specialized vehicles by communities or private
logistic companies, mixed or pre-sorted. Thus transport is
mainly performed in relatively small quantities over short
distances. Then three options are in use: permanent
52 CHINA PARTICUOLOGY Vol. 4, No. 2, 2006

stockpiling of mixed waste in reacting landfill sites, burning improvements, which shall not be regarded here further.
the untreated material in waste-to-energy plants as well as As already discussed at earlier recycling conferences at
mechanical sorting and composting combined with incin- Geneva, entropy will be a key to further development of the
eration before further treatment of the recovered materials overall recycling system, concerning both possible further
in small to medium sized processing plants. The leach- material use routes and energy efficiency. Following en-
proof ashes of the two last mentioned process routes are tropy generation by devaluation of energy the generation of
stockpiled or brought to construction re-use. Most of the entropy by dispersion of materials is the second largest
possible global resources today still end up, however, in quantity in the anthropogenic entropy balance. And like
wild or controlled reacting landfills. Disregarding the ex- other types of entropy, such as of information or of econ-
ternal environmental costs this is still practiced as cheap- omy, both energetic and material entropy are governed by
est solution in many countries. Highly industrialized coun- the second law of thermodynamics. Hornbogen (2002) has
tries with limited land area or sensible environment, which shown that transformations of the structure of matters are
at an early stage used the waste-to-energy path like Japan, based on two elementary processes:
Switzerland, Denmark and very recently Germany, today (1) Disordering (such as dispersion, mixing, crushing);
forbid by law the disposal of untreated residual material. (2) Ordering (such as creation of ordered structures,
The split of the main global post-consumer material stream separation, purification).
into the four routes due to very unclear or missing statistics He defines process steps that lead, intended or unintended,
cannot however be quantified yet. to positive changes of entropy with increase of disorder in
In reacting landfill sites and by burning organic matter in a structure and to negative changes of entropy, when or-
waste-to-energy and recycling plants, emissions of CO2 dered structures are created by input of energy. Sustain-
and H2O occur. These enter the global natural cycles and ability is closely linked with the sum of entropy balances of
contribute to accelerated plant growth as source of bio- the different processing steps of an industrial material
mass. processing cycle, for which both material and energetic
entropy have to be accounted and to be minimized.
3.3 The role of energy and entropy
a)
But what about energy? In Figure 7 the yellow arrows
qualitatively indicate that the whole global material cycle is
driven by all types of primary and secondary energy input.
Again, what fraction of global primary energy supply is
being used for this, also is still an open question. We may
assume a very important one, because energy and mate-
rial use are strongly coupled to each other in an extremely
complex multi-scale manner.
Polymer industry uses energy resources both as raw
materials and processing input and thus is a very strong b)
contributor to global energy consumption and CO2 emis-
sions. By the German Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and
Innovation Research ISI in close cooperation with the
polymer industry, a study for modelling the national Ger-
man polymer production has been performed. It concen-
trated on carbon use in the context of resource efficiency
and climate change (Fig. 8). Two thirds of total German
production in 1995 have been registered (Patel, 1999).
The model considered all possible recycling routes in-
cluding imports and exports at the different processing
steps in manufacture and waste management. It is a good
example of how to create strategies for increasing effi-
ciency and for minimizing negative consequences of en-
ergy and raw materials consumption. Without taking into
account energy consumption for transportation because of
complexity, it shows that 1 700 PJ of primary energy are
used and 57 million tons of CO2 are emitted. Concerning Fig. 9 The role of complexity, entropy and sustainability in recycling
the split of the post-consumer polymer goods only 10% (Hornbogen, 2002).
have been recycled, the remaining 90% being incinerated,
disposed without treatment or exported. Nevertheless the Positive entropy as known from devaluation of heat is
study shows the positive influence of recycling on primary also a measure for dispersion such as combining different
energy use and gives many indications for possible further materials to complex systems like cars and electronic de-
 Reh: Challenges for Process Industries in Recycling 53

vices as shown in Fig. 9a. For their dismantling negative

entropy as ordering force by energy input has to be pro-
vided, which depends on the complexity of the system
treated. The sum of all entropy changes (Fig. 9b) then
decides about the sustainability of the overall processing
system, production and recycling. Probability to reach the
highest possible sustainability of 1 is very low. How far one
may approach this ideal value also depends on human
responsibility to strive for high entropy efficiency. Here
education of humans in a modern technical environment as
well in regard to scientific knowledge or responsibility ver-
sus nature, plays an important role! In consequence edu-
cation for sustainable behaviour has to be added to our
present 3E strategy economy, energy, environment.
Fig. 10 Aluminium production and life cycle (International Aluminium
Institute, 2002).
4. Re-Integration of Secondary Materials
to specific CO2 emissions of 3.5 kg CO2 eq/kg primary
When we discuss recycling in the foreground of our
aluminium produced. In the decade from 1990 to 2000
discussion, we mean mainly the recycling of short last-
these emissions were already cut to half by ongoing in-
ing-consumer goods from households. Industries, however,
tense energy saving efforts! The development of the sec-
due to increasing prices of raw materials and growing
ondary aluminium production from old scrap in relation to
demand for sustainability during the recent decades, are
primary production from 1940 until 1998 together with the
already re-integrating large quantities of different wastes
ratio of specific energy consumption for both production
as secondary raw materials into their production processes.
processes is shown in Fig. 11. One recognizes the time
And the good news: the trend is intensified! If one takes a
delay by which actual secondary production follows pri-
look at the mineral commodities pyramid (Fig. 3), one
mary production. It has been steadily growing but stays
imagines the manifold different industries behind them with
much behind an estimated achievable scrap recycling
highly varying incentives. Driving forces for recycling are,
potential with 15 years period of use and 80% recovery
for instance, the high value of noble metals like gold and
rate. Due to the great difference in specific energy con-
platinum, the scarcity of certain technologically important
sumption between primary and secondary smelting, im-
elements like tungsten and rare earths, the energy saving
porting primary aluminium ingots from low energy cost
in production processes like those for aluminium, steel,
primary smelters is an energy bank for the recycling alu-
glass and paper and the avoidance of unsustainable im-
minium industry. It will favour future growth of recycling when
pacts to the environment such as utilization of coal ash in
near-consumer energy costs rise. Old scrap and total indus-
cement industry and re-integration of demolition waste. In
trial internal scrap recycling in 2003 brought the aluminium
all cases, energy use and secondary material production
production from secondary aluminium to 28.7 million
are closely coupled, even when, in cases like gold recovery,
tons/year, already close to primary production! (Australian
the amount and cost of energy used are economically not
Aluminium Council, 2004)
the most important aim. To stay within the limit of this paper,
in the following, as examples, basic consequences out of
this coupling for aluminium and steel processing will be
discussed.
4.1 Recycling in aluminium industry
A report Industry as a partner for sustainable develop-
ment for UNEP by the International Aluminium Institute
(IAI) indicates, that the global aluminium industry in 2000
produced 24 million tons primary aluminium and 8 million
tons secondary aluminium from old scrap (International
Aluminium Institute, 2002). The IAI covers about 90% of
global aluminium producers in their statistics. A simplified
scheme of the processing route from bauxite mineral to an
idealized cycle from primary to secondary aluminium is
shown in Fig. 10, without the losses in incomplete scrap
collection, however.
The high energy intensity of the aluminium industry is
characterized by specific energy consumptions of 12 Fig. 11 Primary aluminium production and old scrap recycling until
MJ/ton alumina and 15.5 kWh/kg aluminium, which leads 1998 (sources: BGS, NRC, MG, USGS).
54 CHINA PARTICUOLOGY Vol. 4, No. 2, 2006
At the 8th International Congress for Aluminium Recy-
cling of the Organization of European Aluminium Refiners
and Remelters (OEA) in 2005 at Vienna, the increase of
transparency of aluminium recycling was a main topic. The
importance of recycling for the European aluminium indus-
try with limited bauxite reserves for primary production has
been stressed. The processes itself, in view of metal re-
covery, have been technically optimized such that the
European smelters in total have a metal loss during proc-
essing of 2.14% only. The collection and return of old scrap
into processing is still seen as an open question. Global
Aluminium Recycling Committee (GARC) statistics of
global aluminium streams indicate losses of 2.9 million
tons of aluminium in landfills. Information of the where-
about of another 3 million tons is lacking (Organization of
European Aluminium Refiners and Remelters., 2005).
In contrast it seems that the structure of the European
recycling industry is much well defined by the collection and
transporting steps. These are under control of scrap mer-
chants, who also perform the first sorting steps. The unit
capacities of secondary smelters compared to primary
smelters are very small. In the European Union of the 15
(EU 15), 134 refiners produce cast alloys and 101 remelters
produce wrought alloys. Amongst these refiners there is only
one (!) plant with a capacity of > 100 000 tons/year. This is in
the range of one tenth of the present day primary smelter
capacity. Fifty seven refiner units have a production rate of
<1000 tons/year only! This demonstrates that the secondary
aluminium industry has developed slowly over the years in a
bottom-up approach. Under pressure of stricter emission
limits and in regions with good transport infrastructure there
is a trend to larger shredder (Bureau of International Recy-
cling, 2005) and processing units. This certainly will continue
in future when secondary aluminium quantities increase.
Gains in processing entropy efficiency have to be balanced
against higher entropy losses in transportation!
The great challenge to secondary aluminium processing
is entropy of mixing! Aluminium only in some applications
is used as a pure metal. Production processes apply a
large number of different alloys. They contain Si, Fe, Cu,
Mn, Mg, Cr, Zn, Ti, Ni, Pb as alloying elements in specified,
mainly small fractions. Most of these elements may only be
removed with high energy expenditures and at high costs.
Using the scrap for smelting similar alloys therefore is the
preferred option (Boin & Bertram, 2005) This again re-
quires efficient and cost effective analytical control of the
incoming scrap streams, because smelting processes with
strongly varying composition of input are hard to control in
view of high product quality standards. A very challenging
task in secondary aluminium processing will be the optimi-
sation of the collecting and sorting processes of scrap be-
fore smelting, also in regard to working safety by eliminating
explosion creating components (Pierce et al., 2005) during
smelting. Large fractions of scrap still originate from hand
sorting. Here the human eye cannot distinguish the differ-
ent alloys and so production planning of smelters may
become a nightmare when buying scrap from various small
dealers. Optoelectronic spectroscopic systems for control-
ling input streams of the smelters and for up-coming
automatic sorting processes are being developed (Spencer,
2005). Together with linear programming methods to iden-
tify efficient sorting strategies and stochastic methods in
production planning, these certainly will be of great help in
further secondary aluminium recycling processing! (Li et al.,
2005).
4.2 Recycling and structural change in steel
industry
The next example for large scale recycling comes from
steel industry with automotive industry as one of its main
important users. According to the International Iron and
Steel Institute (IISI), in 2003 the total global production of
steel was 964.8 million tons/year, out of which 407 million
tons/year was secondary production (International Iron and
Steel Institute, 2002 & 2004). Steel, beside the unac-
countable demolition wastes of building industry, is the
most recycled material in tonnage. Labour productivity is
600 tons/year and employee is extremely high. The steel
industry mainly (> 90%) uses two technology routes: blast
furnace followed by basic oxygen furnace (BOF) converter
or electric arc furnaces (EAF) as shown in Fig. 12. The
latter is mainly supplied with scrap, about one tenth of
which stems from direct reduced iron (DRI) from direct
reduction processes. In those, reduction is mainly per-
formed by reducing gases with methane (CH4) or hydrogen
(H2) as input.
Fig. 12 Processing routes from ore to raw steel.
The traditional blast furnace route with high unit capaci-
ties of up to 12 000 tons/day raw iron production uses
metallurgical coke and coal as reducing agent and even
poor ores as raw material input. In the BOF converters
about 15% of input is fed as scrap, needed for cooling
purposes. The environmental pressure on this route stead-
ily increases due to high CO2 emissions, large quantities of
slag and volatile metals containing dust from blast furnace
gas cleaning. This happens despite continuous efforts to
reduce specific energy consumption, which resulted in
 Reh: Challenges for Process Industries in Recycling 55

reductions of over 40% since 1960 and in nowadays spe-

cific CO2 emissions of around 1.31.4 kg CO2 /ton of raw
steel. Additional burdens stem from the various emissions
of coke oven and ore sintering plants and from an in-
creasing shortage of good quality metallurgical coal. More
recently conventional blast furnaces are replaced by the
environmentally more friendly COREX shaft furnace, which
only uses coal as reducing agent and avoids coke ovens
and their emissions completely. In spring 2005 Shanghai
Bao Steel Group Corp. has ordered the world largest
COREX unit with 1.5 million tons/year of hot iron. For scrap
recycling, the electric arc furnace technology is the pre-
ferred option, however. Due to operation with scrap and Fig. 13 Estimated specific energy consumption vs global raw steel
production in 2003 (source: IISI, 2004; VdEH, 2005; VLEEM,
optionally added DRI with a fairly low content of slag
2005).
forming components, only a smaller amount of slag has to
be taken care of in cement and building industry. Lower
by addition of direct reduced iron (DRI), from which in 2003
off-gas volumes lead to higher concentrations of volatilized
around 48 million tons were produced globally (The HYL,
non-ferrous metals in the dusts from off-gas cleaning,
2002; Tacke & Steffen, 2004; Hornby Anderson et al., 2002;
which enable more economic recovery in non-ferrous
Goldsworthy & Gull, 2002; Schlebusch, 1997).
metals smelters.
One clearly recognizes from the above trends, that
For both these routes as well as some other minor im-
steadily increasing scrap recycling changes the structure
portant steel production routes, the specific energy con-
of steel processing remarkably. The smaller unit produc-
sumptions for primary and secondary production in GJ/ton
tions of the EAF route with lower capital investment are not
of raw steel are shown in Fig. 13 against the global raw-
steel production in 2003. The arrows show the ever ongo- bound to high capacity and long transportation routes and
ing influence of process improvements, of increasing scrap may be much easier adapted to regionally distributed scrap
input and of increasing demand. The line at the right indi- generation and DRIproduction as well.
cates the production level of global raw steel production 4.3 Recycling in automotive industry
reached only two years later in 2005. It demonstrates the
rapid change in steel processing. There are 400 electric Automotive industry is one of the large steel users.
arc furnaces operating worldwide with batch wise molten Global production in 2000 reached 58 million vehicles
raw steel discharge of up to 135 tons per unit. An oxidising (Kanari et al., 2003). We all know that the majority of cars
high FeO slag is adjusted and oxygen is transferred to the produced shows up at the scrap yard in 10-15 years if not
metal across the liquid slag/metal interface, promoting also wrecked earlier by an accident. Following dismantling of
desulphurization. The high melt temperatures enable the re-useable parts, of hazardous components like fuel, oil
addition of large quantities of alloying elements without and air bag igniters and of special parts for direct material
disturbing operation by solidification. Adjustment of steel recycling, the cars are compacted and transferred into the
purity levels concerning tramp elements is done optionally shredding process (Richard et al., 2005).

Fig. 14 Maximal recovery by combining mechanical and thermal processing steps. (Selinger et al., 2003)
56 CHINA PARTICUOLOGY Vol. 4, No. 2, 2006
About 80% of recoverable materials during End-of-Live
Vehicle (ELV) recycling stem from the mechanical proc-
essing steps of dismantling and shredding (Fig. 14), which
are mainly performed in regionally decentralized and yet
relatively small scale operations. The remaining 20% of
shredder residues (SR) are classified in some countries as
hazardous waste, and in many other countries landfilled.
For near complete recovery of material and energy re-
sources contained in SR, thermal processing is a must,
especially when the EU Directive ELV has to be fulfilled. It
demands quotas for recovery of 95% and for recycling of
85%. For instance the TWINREC-process of EBARA
demonstrates with 99% recycling and recovery, that by
proper combination of mechanical and thermal processing
such recovery rates are technically feasible (Selinger et al.,
2003).
Figure 15 shows schematically a fluidized bed gasifica-
tion process at the Aomori plant in Japan with ash melting
and energy recovery from off-gases, as well as different
fractions of materials from wastes including shredder
residues. The plant is supplied by 5 shredders and 2
non-ferrous separation plants with SR. It treats simultane-
ously mechanically dewatered sewage sludge and hospital
wastes. With two units it has a maximal capacity of 120
000 tons/year of SR. Whereas electricity and granulated
ash have good local applications, the ferrous and non-
ferrous fractions have to be transported to respective
smelters. Here another aspect of bottom-up structure of
the recycling processing industry becomes visible.
In China alone at the end of 2005, 1.5 million end-of-life
vehicles are due for further treatment, of which only about
10% are being dismantled! Rules are formulated in the
State Departments Statute 307 from 2001 (Chen, 2005).
Fig. 15 Combined energy and material recycling in TWINREC Aomori
plant (Selinger et al., 2003).
5. Processing Municipal Wastes
The very often used verbal expression municipal waste
is very vague and may include all kinds of post-consumer
goods from households, different industrial residues from
small scale companies as well as demolition and excava-
tion materials from building industry. To give an impression,
in Germany in 2003 both household wastes and industrial
wastes roughly amounted to about 550 kg per capita each,
but the waste output of building industry was 2.7 tons per
capita, that is, about five times as high! There exist mani-
fold processing routes for treatment and recovery of these
heterogeneous wastes.
Fig. 16 Energy from waste at EWAG Nuremberg. (source: von Roll
Inova, 2005)
As mentioned earlier, many industrialized countries are
burning mixed (unsorted) municipal wastes in modern in-
cineration plants, mostly located strategically close to or
even in the inner part of the city. Fig. 16 shows such a plant
near the main railway station of Nuremberg in Germany
with good logistic connections for collection trucks and
railway (Gablinger, 2005). Waste is collected even from
smaller municipalities located further out of the city to take
advantage of economy of scale and lower emissions dur-
ing transport. Many people are fighting against the erection
of such incineration plants with the argument of noxious
emissions. However, emission control of these plants today
has reached such a high standard, that emissions during
long-distance transportation are coming environmentally
more and more into focus. So incinerators move closer to
urban centres. One may observe also a growing tendency
to place waste sorting and biomass treating plants adja-
cent to the incinerators.
It is worth to have a closer look at the recycling proc-
essing routes of packing materials, which, for instance in
Germany like in several other countries, are being col-
lected separately. Mainly the material groups of paper and
card board, light weight packing materials and glass are
interesting sources of secondary raw materials. In those
the top-down managed production industry has combined
many materials to high value packing products for efficient
protection of all kinds of foodstuff and goods of daily use. If
we consider that in paper recycling, a single fibre may pass
the recycling process up to seven times until it looses its
strength, there would occur a considerable loss of entropy
to burn it following the first use. Of course glue, pigments
and colours, contained in the paper mass in low concen-
 Reh: Challenges for Process Industries in Recycling 57

tration, have to be removed to an high degree and influ-
ence strongly the energy input of the paper recycling
process, by which in 2003 globally 168 million tons/year
paper have been recovered. Separate collection of high
quality used paper eases the live of the recycling process
operator! The same is valid for glass recycling, where
careful separation of differently coloured glass enables the
recycling into high quality glass of the same colours. The
colours originate from highly diluted different metal oxides in
the glass matrix, which cannot be removed economically.

Fig. 17 Ways of packing materials in recycling.

The sorting of mixed light weight packing, as practiced remains the option to keep transportation distances short
by Dual System Deutschland (DSD) in Germany, results by either finding long term cooperative agreements with
in several reasonably small material streams (Fig. 17). nearby recovery processing plants or to concentrate more
These have to be treated further in different processing recovery steps from waste to semi-finished or finished
plants of the primary resources industry, preferably located products at one location. By collecting the wastes, carrier
close by. The sorting residues are burned in waste incin- and logistics companies play an important role in the bot-
erators for energy recovery and in power plants or cement tom-up strategy of recycle processing. It is therefore not
clinkering furnaces for primary energy substitution. Fig. 17 surprising that more and more such companies expand
hides an important point, however: for example, in an and engage themselves in further sorting and preparation
Asian megacity small quantities of residues from millions of processing. A striking example for such an approach was
small households, shops and small enterprises have to be the acquisition of a former combined alumina and alumin-
collected, and then transported at short distances within ium smelter plant at Lnen in Germany in 1993 by the
the city to a relatively small number (say, 10 to 100) of former carrier company Rethmann and its successive
mechanical preparation and sorting plants. This contrib- transformation into a recycle processing centre (Fig. 19).
utes strongly to in-city traffic and its emissions. The mate-
rial off-streams of the latter plants then have to be trans-
ported in larger quantities to only one of the nearby down-
stream recovery processing plants (Fig. 17 right)! By pro-
duction and environmental needs there are generated
fresh material streams for better treatment in a different
recovery process (Fujisawa, 2005). So one finally ends up
in a more sophisticated system of small scale transporta-
tion and processing routes, to answer the higher demand
on rate of recovery. Energy consumption and entropy of
transport are connected with the municipal and regional
infrastructure. As an example, Fig. 18 presents an artists
view of connected material flows between the non-ferrous
smelters and production plants in the late 1970s of the
former Metallgesellschaft Group (MG) in Germany.
Since there are restricted possibilities to limit the number Fig. 18 Transport connections in non-ferrous metallurgical industry of
of material streams out of separation processes, there MG group.
58 CHINA PARTICUOLOGY Vol. 4, No. 2, 2006
Fig. 19 From aluminium smelter to recycle processing centre - Aerial
view of Lippewerk Lnen.
Due to dramatic changes in the structure of the German
aluminium industry, even despite most modern technology,
the Lnen aluminium operation had been too small in scale
to compete economically with larger primary aluminium
plants either overseas or along coast with capacities of
million tons/year. By take-over of the potential of existing
metallurgical know-how, well trained manpower and well
developed infrastructure could be transferred from the
starving producing industry into the growing recycling in-
dustry. By continuing the operation of several already ex-
isting recycling plants and by modifying many existing
processing steps, such as preparation, calcination and
energy production (Reh, 2003), the above complex has
steadily been transformed into the largest recycle proc-
essing centre in Europe. This certainly is an interesting
recycling step by itself, too. The Lippewerk plant thus be-
came the headquarter of the worldwide operating
REMONDIS group (Remondis profile, 2005). With 15 000
employees in altogether 500 different processing units the
company treated in 2004 4 643 000 tons/year of different
material streams, from which 690 000 tons/year have been
marketed as final products.
6. Outlook
The limits of this paper did not allow us to discuss the
numerous other important industrial recycling processing
routes, which are already in full swing in building and min-
erals industries, in pulp and paper processing and in many
non-ferrous metallurgical industries. The examples pre-
sented here already clearly demonstrate the challenges to
which the rapidly developing recycle processing industry is
already confronted.
Parallel to dynamically growing primary resource
streams in the production cycle the used material streams
pressing into the recycling loop in future will grow with
similar gradients, if disposal sites by environmental rea-
sons become more and more closed. There need to be
permanently ongoing adaptive changes in existing primary
and secondary materials processes.
More interdisciplinary exchange on a global level in sta-
tistics of material industries, especially concerning recycled
materials, may help indicating upcoming scarcity of certain
resources and may initiate new process developments in
recycling and economic materials recovery.
A sustainable recycling industry will strongly depend on
the guidance of basic thermodynamic laws. All forms of
entropy, especially those of energy and material, determine
the efficiency of the recycling processes. More fundamen-
tal knowledge in this field for complex multi-scale recycling
systems has to be acquired.
Processing structures of the primary raw material indus-
tries have to be adapted further to the acceptance of sec-
ondary raw materials. Fast and low-cost on-line spectro-
metric controls of spent materials input and of high quality
secondary materials will find a growing market.
Entropy increase in transportation during collection of
the used materials, widely distributed in space and its
connection with regional structures should not be disre-
garded, when developing further the bottom-up processing
routes from used goods to secondary materials.
Finally all humans should become increasingly aware by
education about the importance of material recycling to
global sustainability as well as about their responsibility
and possible contribution to that aim. A 4 E strategy:
Economy, Energy, Environment, Education may be the
way.
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