Exergy losses during recycling and the resource efficiency of product systems |
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Authors: | MBG Castro JAM Remmerswaal JC Brezet MA Reuter |
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Institution: | aDesign for Sustainability Section, Faculty of Design, Construction and Production, Delft University of Technology, Landberghstraat 15, 2628CE Delft, The Netherlands;bResource Engineering Section, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands |
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Abstract: | Recycling materials have always some degree of contamination. The presence of contaminations in the recycling streams causes a shift in the original composition of the materials to recycle. As a consequence, their quality may decrease with each recycling step. Additionally, lower quality resources are produced from resource streams that had initially a higher quality. These quality losses cannot be measured by mass balances, as the quality degradation cannot be translated by mass measures alone. To account all losses caused by recycling contaminations, all downstream recycling processes required to bring the materials back to the resource cycles must be included. This article describes a method to calculate the exergy content and exergy losses of metal solutions during recovery and recycling. The losses attributed to recycling, namely the material losses, the contamination losses with other metals, and the consequent need for dilution can be used as indicators of the quality loss of materials and of the efficiency of resource use in product systems. Therefore, exergy is proposed here as a measure of the efficiency of resources use. |
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Keywords: | Exergy Recycling Losses Resource conservation Resource quality Sustainability Resource efficiency Dilution Contamination LCA ELCA |
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