Tetronics Partners with Solar Industries to Provide Plasma Plants for Electrical Waste Refining
The technology will extract valuable Precious Metals including; Gold, Silver and Platinum Group from Electrical Waste and Industrial Catalysts, thereby, generating significant value whilst preserving the supply of natural resources.
Tetronics Ltd., a global leader in the supply of Direct Current (DC) plasma waste recovery plants for the treatment of hazardous waste and metal recovery, has formed a partnership with Solar Applied Materials Technology Corp., Taiwan, one of the world’s leading players in precious metal and rare material refining, to investigate opportunities for utilising Plasma technology, for the extraction of valuable metals from Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) sources and industrial/auto catalysts across a number of countries in the far east.
The supply of the first Plasma plant, for installation in Taiwan, is now underway in order to recover Precious Metals (PMs) including Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) for subsequent final refining. The patented Plasma technology will also destroy any hazardous organic material, such as dioxins etc. that may be contained within the waste material.
Over the past decades, electronics have revolutionized the world and electrical products have become ubiquitous of today's life around the planet. With an increasing demand for electronics, comes the escalation of the waste it creates and according to the UN Environment Programme, the worldwide total waste generated from electronics could be 50 million tonnes per year. Due to increased pressures on companies to contribute towards natural resource conservation and the difficulties and rising costs in extracting primary sources of metals, electrical waste is increasingly seen as a more attractive option for material supply.
Dr Ma, Chief Operating Officer for Solar explains;
“We are not simply buying a plasma solution, we are more importantly building on an already strong partnership with Tetronics that will see us leveraging other spent catalyst and related opportunities in Taiwan, China and further afield. Tetronics’ support has been essential to the Solar team and will be instrumental in progressing these opportunities going forward.” Dr Ma continues;
“The refining technology is of course important to us, and we are confident that Tetronics’ plasma solution provides higher levels of technical recovery than any competing technology.”
Stephen Davies, CEO for Tetronics comments;
“Tetronics is proud to have been selected as a long-term partner with Solar, one of the world’s fastest growing players in precious metal and rare material recovery. We believe our plasma technology is ideally suited to support Solar in their continued rapid growth plans.”
The process chemistry in Tetronics’ plasma recovery technology is designed to symbiotically and preferentially separate and recover the valuable material in electronic waste whilst destroying any hazardous components. The remaining non-valuable material is vitrified into an inert, safe disposable nonâ€hazardous material, called Plasmarok®, in a single processing step. The robust level of construction and minimal number of moving components delivers outstanding plant longevity. The recovery process also has exceptional environmental and commercial credentials and can be considered as a futureâ€proof solution for electrical waste management problems.
Tetronics Limited
Unit A2 Marston Gate
South Marston Park
Swindon
Wiltshire
SN34DE
+44 (0)1793 238 500