The production of electric and electronic equipment (EEE) is one of the fastest growing
areas. This development has resulted in an increase of waste electric and electronic
equipment (WEEE). In view of the environmental problems involved in the management
of WEEE, many counties and organizations have drafted national legislation to improve
the reuse, recycling and other forms of recovery of such wastes so as to reduce disposal.
Recycling of WEEE is an important subject not only from the point of waste treatment
but also from the recovery of valuable materials.WEEE is diverse and complex, in terms
of materials and components makeup as well as the original equipment's manufacturing
processes. Characterization of this waste stream is of paramount importance for developing
a cost-effective and environmentally friendly recycling system. In this paper, the
physical and particle properties of WEEE are presented. Selective disassembly, targeting
on singling out hazardous and/or valuable components, is an indispensable process
in the practice of recycling of WEEE. Disassembly process planning and innovation
of disassembly facilities are most active research areas. Mechanical/physical processing,
based on the characterization of WEEE, provides an alternative means of recovering
valuable materials. Mechanical processes, such as screening, shape separation, magnetic
separation, Eddy current separation, electrostatic separation, and jigging have been
widely utilized in recycling industry. However, recycling of WEEE is only beginning.
For maximum separation of materials, WEEE should be shredded to small, even fine particles,
generally below 5 or 10mm. Therefore, a discussion of mechanical separation processes
for fine particles is highlighted in this paper. Consumer electronic equipment (brown
goods), such as television sets, video recorders, are most common. It is very costly
to perform manual dismantling of those products, due to the fact that brown goods
contain very low-grade precious metals and copper. It is expected that a mechanical
recycling process will be developed for the upgrading of low metal content scraps.