Economic and environmental opportunities in electronics industry

Due to industrial development and technological innovation, many problems arise from the increasing number of electronics devices that need to be managed at end of life. The two main market failures related to waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) are economic loss and environmental externalities. Incomplete recovery of materials in waste mobile phones results in a great amount of economic loss. Many studies aim to improve the situation by characterizing metals within printed circuit boards (PCBs). My work focuses on the evolving composition and the flow of materials located outside of PCBs. I have discovered significant economic potential of non-PCB metals, and provide suggestions for optimization of different preprocessing steps. I recommend that preprocessors pay special attention to precious metals in fine shredding. And I have also provided strategies for plastics recycling by forecasting the demand and supply of it in Portugal. Besides opportunities for addressing environmental impact in the end-of-life stage of electronics products, there are also opportunities in other life cycle stages such as GHG savings by the enablement of semiconductors in the use stage. I identify six areas of GHG savings and provide insights for more informed policy to better evaluate the influence of technologies in the electronics industry.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Liu, Weitong, S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Elsa Olivetti.

• Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.
• Engineering Systems Division.
• Technology and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/111235

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/111235