Determining the Most Appropriate Material Substitution by Upcycling and Recycling Methods for The Management of Waste Printed Circuit Boards

Abstract

In this study, the material substitutions that would be achieved by upcycling and recycling methods that can be applied to waste printed circuit boards were compared through the sequential application of Streamlined Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) and Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) techniques. Substitutions by upcycling methods were determined as gold mine, bronze mine, lead mine, activated carbon, and copper mine. And, portland cement, aggregate, sawdust, fiberglass and styrene butadiene rubber were determined as the substituted materials that can be obtained by recycling methods. At the S-LCA stage, CML-IA baseline and ReCiPe 2016 methods were used for the characterization. For the MCDM study, environmental, technical, and economic criteria were determined. Remarkable characterization results of S-LCA were used as the environmental criteria of MCDM. The Entropy method was used for the weighting of the criteria. TOPSIS method was used to compare the alternatives on the basis of weighted criteria. LCA study shows that impact categories of Abiotic Depletion Potential (element basis), Total Ecotoxicity Potential, and Human Toxicity Potential are the major impact categories. MCDM study shows that gold (0.9845) and styrene butadiene rubber (SBR) (0.7361) are the most appropriate substitutions that can be obtained by upcycling and recycling methods, respectively.