Technology:
Since
the law to purchase renewable energy at a fixed price was enacted in 2012, photovoltaic
generation has been growing popular quite rapidly. A solar panel has a life
between 20 and 30 years. The Ministry of the Environment estimates that used
photovoltaic generation equipment will amount up to 700,000 tons in 2030. A
solar battery contains various metals including rare metals like iridium and
has the possibility of becoming prospect in the future.
DOWA Holdings has been developing technologies to recover metals like gold, silver,
and copper from black ores since the Meiji Period, and it is working on solar
panels to establish a technology to recycle them with a view to recovering rare
metals. It is urgent and important to establish a recycling technology to eliminate
a large amount of used solar panels to be thrown away for land reclamation. Urban
mine is a very important source of metals. The Institute of Metal Sciences
reckons that urban mine in Japan is estimated to have more than 10% of world’s reserves
of such metals as gold, silver, tin, and iridium.
Tantalum,
for example, is a rare metal. Mitsui Kinzoku Recycle is developing a technology
to recover tantalum from tantalum capacitors in collaboration with National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. The technology is to
separate capacitors from electronic substrates and recover tantalum at a high purity
utilizing the difference of specific gravity. The company is scheduled to start
commercial production of tantalum in 2016.
Ricoh and
Japan Future Eco-Systems are jointly developing a technology to change waste
plastics not to resin materials but to oil. They heat waste plastics to 600-800
degrees centigrade in an iron container, and recover heating oil and heavy oil
from vaporized substance. They are in the middle of putting this technology
into practical application. Ricoh is receiving inquiries on this technology from
Southeast Asian countries and confident of spreading this technology worldwide.
The
Japanese domestic recycling market is estimated at 7 trillion yen and supposed
to grow further thanks to technological innovation that increases recoverable amount
and expands the products subject to recycling.
Exploring urban mines
Rare metal selection equipment (1)
Rare metal selection equipment (2)
