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It has been estimated that global LCD sales are over 200 million units per year. Given that many LCDs have a short lifespan a large amount of LCDs are made redundant each year and require proper disposal.
These LCDs contain indium, a value metal that is on the EU critical raw materials (CRM) list. LCDs represent a potential to unlock a volume this CRM. LCDVAL project aims to illustrate viable recovery options for indium that have commercial potential.
Indium Recovery from LCDs
university of limerickraw materials research
ACCESSING INDIUM
www.lcdval.euTel: +353 61 20 2910
www.lcdval.eu TeL: +353 61 20 2910
university of limerickraw materials research
Indium Recovery from LCDs
Project Co-ordinator,Dr. Lisa O'DonoghueEmail: [email protected]: +353 61 20 2910
The LCDVal project was co-fundedby the EPA,WEEE Ireland and the European Recycling Platform
Optical images of internal surface of LCD glass panels containing ITO
ACCESSING INDIUM
INDIUM LOCATIONS
LCDs consists of a very thin layer of liquid crystal mixture enclosed between two transparent parallel glass substrates. Electrodes made of a transparent conducting material, usually indium tin oxide (ITO) are deposited on top of these layers.
Are all liquid crystal panels the same? Results to date show that variations in the generic structure of the LCD are possible giving rise to variations in the material volume content of dierent LCDs. Indium content varied significantly from 38 to 292 mg indium per kg glass substrate. It is clear that a significant amount of variation exists between dierent LCDs even produced by the same manufacturers.
KEY INDUSTRIAL DRIVERS
Key drivers that eect the end user purchase of raw material indium as identified by industrial surveys included amount of indium recoverable, cost of process and purity of the indium.
RECOVRY STRATEGY
Traditional recovery focuses on hydrometallurgy and extraction however, these techniques required significant volumes of infeed indium in order to justify the investment and process cost. As indium is present in lower volumes in LCDs the recovery strategy focused on pre-treatments to access indium powder or residue in high volumes that could subsequently be processed via traditional hydrometallurgy.
Novel approaches to access the indium powder or residue in high volumes from dierent LCD.
PRE-TREATMENT STRATEGY
The pre-treatment strategy focused on surface treatments to remove the indium using various grinding & abrasive media, high speed bulk grinding processes to generate homogeneous powders which can undergo physical separation techniques for indium fraction removal and finally evaporation of indium from the surface using laser ablation techniques.
conClusions
Bulking grinding processes yielded a fine powder upon filtering of 53um which was up concentrated in indium at 900 mg/kg glass substrate, while surface grinding techniques yielded a low volume of fine powder with 6500mg/kg glass substrate and finally laser ablation yielded a residue of indium on a glass capture media of 900 mg/m2 of media. The latter two techniques gave the best results while the laser technique has the added advantage of being readily automatable. Initial process flows and automation layout have been considered.
FUTURE FOCUS
The future focus of the research is to optimize the process parameters and process media used for capture of the indium as well as process automation for high volume recovery.
Optical images of internal surface of LCD glass panels containing ITO
ACCESSING INDIUM
INDIUM LOCATIONS
LCDs consists of a very thin layer of liquid crystal mixture enclosed between two transparent parallel glass substrates. Electrodes made of a transparent conducting material, usually indium tin oxide (ITO) are deposited on top of these layers.
Are all liquid crystal panels the same? Results to date show that variations in the generic structure of the LCD are possible giving rise to variations in the material volume content of dierent LCDs. Indium content varied significantly from 38 to 292 mg indium per kg glass substrate. It is clear that a significant amount of variation exists between dierent LCDs even produced by the same manufacturers.
KEY INDUSTRIAL DRIVERS
Key drivers that eect the end user purchase of raw material indium as identified by industrial surveys included amount of indium recoverable, cost of process and purity of the indium.
RECOVRY STRATEGY
Traditional recovery focuses on hydrometallurgy and extraction however, these techniques required significant volumes of infeed indium in order to justify the investment and process cost. As indium is present in lower volumes in LCDs the recovery strategy focused on pre-treatments to access indium powder or residue in high volumes that could subsequently be processed via traditional hydrometallurgy.
Novel approaches to access the indium powder or residue in high volumes from dierent LCD.
PRE-TREATMENT STRATEGY
The pre-treatment strategy focused on surface treatments to remove the indium using various grinding & abrasive media, high speed bulk grinding processes to generate homogeneous powders which can undergo physical separation techniques for indium fraction removal and finally evaporation of indium from the surface using laser ablation techniques.
conClusions
Bulking grinding processes yielded a fine powder upon filtering of 53um which was up concentrated in indium at 900 mg/kg glass substrate, while surface grinding techniques yielded a low volume of fine powder with 6500mg/kg glass substrate and finally laser ablation yielded a residue of indium on a glass capture media of 900 mg/m2 of media. The latter two techniques gave the best results while the laser technique has the added advantage of being readily automatable. Initial process flows and automation layout have been considered.
FUTURE FOCUS
The future focus of the research is to optimize the process parameters and process media used for capture of the indium as well as process automation for high volume recovery.
Optical images of internal surface of LCD glass panels containing ITO
ACCESSING INDIUM
INDIUM LOCATIONS
LCDs consists of a very thin layer of liquid crystal mixture enclosed between two transparent parallel glass substrates. Electrodes made of a transparent conducting material, usually indium tin oxide (ITO) are deposited on top of these layers.
Are all liquid crystal panels the same? Results to date show that variations in the generic structure of the LCD are possible giving rise to variations in the material volume content of dierent LCDs. Indium content varied significantly from 38 to 292 mg indium per kg glass substrate. It is clear that a significant amount of variation exists between dierent LCDs even produced by the same manufacturers.
KEY INDUSTRIAL DRIVERS
Key drivers that eect the end user purchase of raw material indium as identified by industrial surveys included amount of indium recoverable, cost of process and purity of the indium.
RECOVRY STRATEGY
Traditional recovery focuses on hydrometallurgy and extraction however, these techniques required significant volumes of infeed indium in order to justify the investment and process cost. As indium is present in lower volumes in LCDs the recovery strategy focused on pre-treatments to access indium powder or residue in high volumes that could subsequently be processed via traditional hydrometallurgy.
Novel approaches to access the indium powder or residue in high volumes from dierent LCD.
PRE-TREATMENT STRATEGY
The pre-treatment strategy focused on surface treatments to remove the indium using various grinding & abrasive media, high speed bulk grinding processes to generate homogeneous powders which can undergo physical separation techniques for indium fraction removal and finally evaporation of indium from the surface using laser ablation techniques.
conClusions
Bulking grinding processes yielded a fine powder upon filtering of 53um which was up concentrated in indium at 900 mg/kg glass substrate, while surface grinding techniques yielded a low volume of fine powder with 6500mg/kg glass substrate and finally laser ablation yielded a residue of indium on a glass capture media of 900 mg/m2 of media. The latter two techniques gave the best results while the laser technique has the added advantage of being readily automatable. Initial process flows and automation layout have been considered.
FUTURE FOCUS
The future focus of the research is to optimize the process parameters and process media used for capture of the indium as well as process automation for high volume recovery.
It has been estimated that global LCD sales are over 200 million units per year. Given that many LCDs have a short lifespan a large amount of LCDs are made redundant each year and require proper disposal.
These LCDs contain indium, a value metal that is on the EU critical raw materials (CRM) list. LCDs represent a potential to unlock a volume this CRM. LCDVAL project aims to illustrate viable recovery options for indium that have commercial potential.
Indium Recovery from LCDs
university of limerickraw materials research
ACCESSING INDIUM
www.lcdval.euTel: +353 61 20 2910
www.lcdval.eu TeL: +353 61 20 2910
university of limerickraw materials research
Indium Recovery from LCDs
Project Co-ordinator,Dr. Lisa O'DonoghueEmail: [email protected]: +353 61 20 2910
The LCDVal project was co-fundedby the EPA,WEEE Ireland and the European Recycling Platform
It has been estimated that global LCD sales are over 200 million units per year. Given that many LCDs have a short lifespan a large amount of LCDs are made redundant each year and require proper disposal.
These LCDs contain indium, a value metal that is on the EU critical raw materials (CRM) list. LCDs represent a potential to unlock a volume this CRM. LCDVAL project aims to illustrate viable recovery options for indium that have commercial potential.
Indium Recovery from LCDs
university of limerickraw materials research
ACCESSING INDIUM
www.lcdval.euTel: +353 61 20 2910
www.lcdval.eu TeL: +353 61 20 2910
university of limerickraw materials research
Indium Recovery from LCDs
Project Co-ordinator,Dr. Lisa O'DonoghueEmail: [email protected]: +353 61 20 2910
The LCDVal project was co-fundedby the EPA,WEEE Ireland and the European Recycling Platform
It has been estimated that global LCD sales are over 200 million units per year. Given that many LCDs have a short lifespan a large amount of LCDs are made redundant each year and require proper disposal.
These LCDs contain indium, a value metal that is on the EU critical raw materials (CRM) list. LCDs represent a potential to unlock a volume this CRM. LCDVAL project aims to illustrate viable recovery options for indium that have commercial potential.
Indium Recovery from LCDs
university of limerickraw materials research
ACCESSING INDIUM
www.lcdval.euTel: +353 61 20 2910
www.lcdval.eu TeL: +353 61 20 2910
university of limerickraw materials research
Indium Recovery from LCDs
Project Co-ordinator,Dr. Lisa O'DonoghueEmail: [email protected]: +353 61 20 2910
The LCDVal project was co-fundedby the EPA,WEEE Ireland and the European Recycling Platform
