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Why isn't it melted down into a giant "distillery" where you can drain certain levels for the materials? The slag would be hardened out then crushed, and maybe
by bruce343434 4y ago
Why isn't it melted down into a giant "distillery" where you can drain certain levels for the materials? The slag would be hardened out then crushed, and maybe a centrifuge can take it from there to separate even further.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- marcosdumay 4y agoThe results aren't valuable enough to pay for this kind of processing.
- rvense 4y agoI was actually under the impression that this is more or less what they do, but that not everything can be recovered this way, in particular the various materials that get encased in epoxy for ease of handling, like most of electronic components. And when you look at the semiconductors, the chips and the display, the input materials to most of it aren't really that special, as I understand, but turning the sand into thinking machines takes clean rooms, factories, transportation and processing that add up to huge amounts of energy - in some cases as much as will be used to power the device in its lifetime, I've heard. And no recycling technique is ever going to bring the embodied energy back.