[en] In this time of increasing demand for raw materials, and environmental awareness, designing an efficient metal recycling process is increasingly becoming critical in achieving a more circular-oriented economy. Despite numerous literatures of successful processes developed for specific waste materials, there are only a few that have been applied in the industry. The challenge lies not just in the technical viability of the process upon scale-up, but also on the possible burden shifting of environmental impacts due to said process. Using life cycle assessment (LCA) to assess these impacts is necessary. But since LCA was initially developed to assess a system’s primary function, dealing with multifunctional systems like a recycling process is only based on the practitioner’s discretion thus needing improvement. Scaling up the process is also technically challenging because of the great variation in the process’ efficiency and performance in the laboratory and when scaled up. Though process simulators give perspective on how the process performs in terms of products and material or energy flows, effects of equipment size and design are not necessarily considered on most simulators. This research aims to address these challenges in both LCA and process simulation through case studies of several types of recycling metal loops for both experimental and industrial metal recycling processes especially those dealing with end-of-life for electromobilities.
