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

摘要

The center for Eco-mining conducts a nationalresearch and development project for promoting the recycling ofnonferrous metal scraps with MITI, NEDO, universities andnonferrous metal producers from 1993 to 2002. The contents ofthe project are as follows:? Current situation and trends about supply-demand of virgin andscrap metals in Japan, and future tasks in the area of recycling thescraps are examined for basic researches.? Advanced smelting technologies to ensure production of high-quality nonferrous metals and reducing off-gases are established inthe studies of element technologies.? Element technologies are combined in and a super smeltersystem is developed in a total system technology. A super smeltersystem makes it possible to recover base metals efficiently fromwaste materials ,to stabilize and minimize the final disposal wastes,to source the energy from LNG or from waste plastics, and tomake the best use of existing infra-structure. This reportintroduces parts of the project.? Life-cycle flows of copper, zinc, and lead in 1994, Japan wereinvestigated. Overall supply of copper is 2407 thousand tonsincluding 1169 thousand tons of virgin and scrap copper forwire/rod, and 1094 thousand tons for rolled products and 144thousand tons for foundries. 560 thousand tons of copper scrap isestimated to be generated, of which 382 thousand tons are recycledand the remaining 178 thousand tons are estimated to be landfilled.? A super smelter system is designed to process shredder dustscontaining copper by ca.3% and to produce 99.99% copper by pyrometallurgy.