Assessing the Potential Value of Circular Practice in Taiwan’s Industrial Chains of Copper with Material Flow and Cost Analyses

Abstract

Assessing the Potential Value of Circular Practice in Taiwan’s Industrial Chains of Copper with Material Flow and Cost Analyses Tsung-Yen Tsai Pi-Cheng Chen Department of Environmental Engineering & National Cheng Kung University SUMMARY The study shows the material flow and cost analyses for copper in Taiwan’s industrial chains Then the principle of circular economy is applied in this study to create or find the value of copper circulation To illustrate current situation of copper consumption and quantify the cost and benefit for analyzing the value chain of copper the material flow analysis and material flow cost accounting are implemented respectively According to the results of material flow analysis show that the great amount of the cathode is imported and the copper recycle is not complete in Taiwan Furthermore from the results of five hotspots that we screen out show that the amount of waste wire and cable can reach the profit standard for the copper smelting but the vehicle can’t be reached And the results of material flow cost accounting show that the main loss part of printed circuit board process is caused by etching and detection the vehicle process is caused by the consumption of raw material and crushing/sorting Finally in conclusion the study knows the current situation of copper are imported from the global supply chain and the amount of waste wire and cable can be used as the raw material of the copper smelting plant Considering the circular-economy scenario benefit the printed circuit board industry and the vehicle industry are positive value of circular economy but the heat-exchange equipment is negative value of circular economy Key words：Copper Circular economy Material flow analysis Cost-benefit analysis Industrial chains ? INTRODUCTION Taiwan is not a copper mine production country and the copper materials of domestic industries are imported from the global supply chain Copper is a widely used metal and the manufacturing industries in Taiwan consume 1 694 273-ton copper in 2016 Recently due to increasing the infrastructure construction for the United State policy after the 2016 election the increased demand of copper leads the price rise from 4 645 USD/ton to 6 000 USD/ton As to the copper depends on the global supply chain importing and the copper price has the trend of rise this study analyzes the flow of copper in the Taiwan’s industrial chains From the result of analysis the purpose is to know the Taiwan’s main copper industry find the recyclable amount and application of the copper and assess the value of copper circular MATERIALS AND METHODS Copper is a critical material which means copper has great environmental impact low resource efficiency low economic benefit and high supply risk To use copper efficiently we investigate the circular economy’s potential for the copper in Taiwan To know the circular economy’s potential for the copper in this study material flow analysis is implemented to illustrate current situation of copper consumption by the industries in Taiwan Furthermore we screen out the hotspots industries of copper for analyzing the value chain of copper to quantify the cost and benefit with material flow cost accounting Finally for these hotspots industries of copper that produce waste or waste raw material in the process this study designs a high-cycle scenario based on the related technical literature RESULTS AND DISCUSSION We divide the life cycle stages of copper into raw material semi-finished products products use and recycling resource and waste management The results of material flow analysis show that the main items imported in raw material stage are cathode the main items in semi-finished products stage are bare copper wire followed by copper casting and copper foil The main items in the products stage are cable metal hand tool and metal mold In the use stage the main items are machine and architecture However in the recycling resource and waste management stage the results show that the copper recycle is not complete in Taiwan Then we screen out five hotspots that are the copper recycle for waste wire and cable printed circuit board byproduct waste appliance electronic product and the vehicle The results of hotspots show that the waste parts of wire and cable if used as copper smelting raw materials it can be reaching the profit standard But the recycle amount of the vehicle can not reach the profit standard for the smelting The printed circuit board byproduct has the great amount of waste generated it can develop the 3D printing to reduce the generation of waste The development of IOT in the future will lead the increasing requirement of the electronic product and the copper The main items of the waste appliance are air conditioner and fridge the regeneration rate is 65 31% and 63 6% respectively The results of hotspots with material flow cost accounting show that the main part of waste for the process in the industry The main loss part of printed circuit board process is caused by etching and detection The main loss part of vehicle process is caused by consuming raw material and crushing/sorting The main loss part of heat-exchange equipment process is not much we speculate the process and recycling technique is complete The results of designing high-cycle scenario show that the different scenario can cause different circular economy value It can be found the cost-effective recycling model We compare the waste etching solution recycling scheme the ion exchange combined with electrolysis is better than electrolysis On the waste car recycling side the manual selection is better than crusher Considering the circular-economy scenario benefit the result of cost and benefit analysis show that printed circuit board and vehicle are positive value The value of copper is 395 NT million dollars and 1 135 NT million dollars respectively On the other hand the heat-exchange equipment is negative value The loss value of copper is 344 NT million dollars CONCLUSION In Taiwan’s copper industry chain the great amount of copper materials is imported from the global supply chain and there is a lack of information on the follow-up downstream of waste circulation According to the analysis of the amount of the copper circulation and the circular pathway of hotspots in the copper material flow system the amount of waste wire and cable can be used as the raw material of the copper smelting plant On the circular-economy scenario benefit side the printed circuit board industry and the automotive industry are in line with the cost-benefit of recycling while the heat-exchange equipment is not in line with the cost-benefit of recycling

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English
Supervisor	Pi-cheng chen (Supervisor)