Recycling processes

In the context of integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) recycling covers processes at the end of the lifetime (EoL) of mechanical, electronic, or other components of machines and devices. Depending on the state in which they exist as EoL material they can either be used directly for new material production. This chapter provides a short overview of materials that are being recycled today and the methods applied. It focuses on computational methods applied in the field of recycling, the foremost being methods of computational thermochemistry since mutual solubilities, phase transformations, and reactions as well as heat balances play the most important part in recycling just as they do in standard production. The chapter discusses materials-centric recycling, product-centric recycling, physical separation methods and chemical separation methods. It shows various aspects and phenomena that affect the final recovery of all elements from a product, including the residence time of materials in the market, and subsequent metallurgical processing.