Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1496178
22 SMT007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2023 vibrators and sieves; further recovery is possible from the "black dust" that remains. It requires special processing and is often done overseas. Personally, and perhaps naively, I thought we had progressed a little bit since "The Flintstones." For probably one of the most significant new products and technologies of our age, it seems we would have figured out from the start how to make the recycling end of this business sustainable, especially considering the rarity and difficulty to source these materials, as well as the cost and pollution caused by these basic recycling methods. There is then the volume to consider. Right now, such batteries need recycling only in the event of a battery failure or damage to a car in an accident. In perhaps a decade or so, we will be well on the ramp-up curve, as all of today's electric cars reach their end of life. Other immediate examples of "Flintstones" recycling include the recovery of rare-earth magnets from products such as mechanical hard disks and speakers, where the part of the product containing the magnets is simply cut off—and Bamm-Bamm is called in. In the case of electronic products, we have started to disassemble the products rather than just crushing them. Governments have created legislation to reduce electronic waste in landfills, such that discrete products made up of sub- assemblies, key components, and hazardous materials can be separated out by reverse assembly, then reused, recovered, or recycled. There are new technologies on the horizon to replace the PCB base FR-4 material, such that when everything has been removed, we are left with something that can actually be recycled. The "circular economy" is often thought about in terms of the recoverability of materials which can be reused in manufacturing, but this focus is too narrow. Success will remain elusive if we continue with the way things are, as the cost of material recovery is simply not yet a viable business model in most cases. The flaw in the plan is expecting that one day the recycling business model will become realistic if it relies on materials becoming rarer and, hence, more expensive to justify the cost of recycling. By then, as most materials will have been wasted and lost, it will be too late for recycling to scale to the level needed to replace raw material availability. Therefore, the focus needs to be on creating a sustainable recycling business plan now, reducing the cost, and increasing the yield of current recycling strategies. Car batteries are based on relatively new and evolving technologies. The focus of their design is on operational and cost performance, as well as physical attributes that make up the design of the car itself. Little or no effort appears to be made on design for recycling. One reason is that there are no common guidelines in the design and manufacturing process; everyone is doing it for themselves. There are, however, some very simple things that can be done. Knowing where key bolts are located, using standard symbols or RFID technology, for example, can reduce the manual labor for disassembly significantly, allowing disassembly by robot automation. Today we are needlessly investing in projects that try to reverse engineer these bolts, using AI-driven vision processing, size, and torque estimations that will never become commercially viable. Instead, we need to take the simple steps to standardize, or at least document, the way things are made and should be disassembled. Another challenge is the glue used to seal the battery cells within the housing. This glue is intentionally extremely difficult to penetrate, but could be replaced with a glue that dissolves, for example, when subjected to a high concentration of hydrogen. These ideas do not limit or compromise Personally, and perhaps naively, I thought we had progressed a little bit since "The Flintstones."