Preliminary Status Analysis Methodology on Hazardous and Valuable Metal Recovery in Industrial Wastes Using Public Database

Korea, one of the manufacturing-oriented countries, consumes a large amount of metals in various industrial areas, but should depend on import of most of the metals from foreign countries. Also, global metal consumption amounts are increasing in relation to those of the world's reserve and production. Some metals are limitedly produced from only several centuries, which might lead to instability of the future supply of those metals. In addition, when such metals are hazardous, those may result in various environmental troubles with contamination. To resolve those issues, the recovery and the recycling of hazardous but valuable metals in industrial waste are desirable. However, there are overwhelming numbers of the metal types, waste generators, and amounts of wastes containing the metals, so it can be troublesome even to implement a preliminary status analysis to screen proper metals, wastes with the metals, and waste producers. Therefore, this study introduces the valuable metals for Korean industry, announced by public institutions, Also, a flow chart is suggested to facilitate a preliminary status analysis, using the domestic PRTR (Pollutant Release and Transfer Register) database, to screen proper waste producers containing some of hazardous but valuable metals such as nickel, cobalt, and manganese.