Current situation trends about, and research and development for recycling scraps of nonferrous metals including copper

摘要

The Center for Eco-Mining conducts a national research and development project for promoting the recycling of nonferrous metal scraps with MITI, NEDO, universities and nonferrous metal producers from 1993 to 2002. The contents of the project are as follows: 1.Current situation and trends about supply- demand of virgin and scrap metals in Japan, and future tasks in the area of recycling the scraps are examined for basic researches. 2.Advanced smelting technologies to ensure production of high-quality nonferrous metals and reducing off-gases are established in the studies of element technologies. 3.Element technologies are combined in and a super smelter system is developed in a total system technology. A super smelter system makes it possible to recover base metals efficiently from waste materials, to stabilize and minimize the final disposal wastes, to source the energy from LNG or from waste plastics, and to make the best use of existing infra-structure. This report introduces parts of the project. 1.Life-cycle flows of copper, zinc, and lead in 1994, Japan were investigated. Overall supply of copper is 2407 thousand tons including 1169 thousand tons of virgin and scrap copper for wire/rod, and 1094 thousand tons for rolled products and 144 thousand tons for foundries. 560 thousand tons of copper scrap is estimated to be generated, of which 382 thousand tons are recycled and the remaining 178 thousand tons are estimated to be landfilled. 2.A super smelter system is designed to process shredder dusts containing copper by ca. 3 % and to produce 99.99 % copper by pyrometallurgy.