Slashdot Mirror
New Glue Could Reduce Computer Trash
LostScorp88 writes: "An engineer at Cornell University, Mr. Chris Ober, has developed a new glue for computer parts (mainly mobos/circuit boards) that allows them to be recycled. Previously, the glue used was too strong to be easily separated. The new glue allows the parts to be separated at high temperatures. Read the article [here]." Considering the problems (and expense) of properly and legally disposing of computer equipment, this small advance could have a big impact.
don't say the food is bad... just ask for ketchup and mustard...
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Funny how the first few posters seem to think that this would affect the recycling of parts, when actually the goal would be to be able to seperate different kinds of materials, thereby to allow reusing them instead of just burning or throwing away a strange mix of stuff, which has its own kinds of negative impact on the environment.
Being able to cleanly separate the layers of a circuit board is currently one of the biggest obstacles in recycling electronics.
Remember, you don't want to reuse 8088's or somesuch, but the raw materials.
So yes, I think this may be a big issue.
4im
[shrug]
on a more serious note:
the glue is important because solder alone is not used to bind components. but you know this if you read the article. This is because the through hole strength of wire is often not sufficient for the big stuff, among other things.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Separation requires high temperatures... such as those generated by a Pentium IV operating under normal conditions.
oops.
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How about the current ones? Is any of that, horse glue?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Yeah, but what about when I overclock, will the bond hold *GRIN*
(tis a joke, s'ok to laugh).
Eh...
- Donation of Computers to Schools, Charities, and Nonprofit Organizations. This is a good option if you're about to get rid of your old Pentium-100 system for a new one. Today's used computers make great tools for schools and nonprofits, charities, and other organizations, since they can all pretty much run a word processor, web browser, and more without any trouble. You can also get a tax break, if you're American! (dunnot about other countries, but I wouldn't be surprised to see similar incentives...)
- Reuse. The type of recycling that is being discussed by most people on this post. Sure, the old components aren't terribly useful to your average Slashdotter, but again, todays computers are wuite powerful enough to serve a wide array of uses. Those "obsolete" mobo components or boards can be put to work in other systems that don't require huge amounts of power or complex circuitry.
- Recycling. The hard core reuse, this is when they actually start melting things down to get at the trace amounts of lead, gold, platinum, copper, etc. that can be melted out of a system. Hazardous and hard to do if you try it yourself; less challenging if you give it to a company that specializes in it. These companies do, in fact, exist.
Is there a market for recycling computers? You bet. Look at automobile recycling. I've seen countless successful junkyards filled to the gills with POS vechicles which are, quite frankly, completely and utterly worthless to the average person. Yet somehow, these companies continue to exist, do business, grow, and even thrive. There's money to be made in recycling, and given something like a computer (where you have a very high value to size ratio,) you can bet that an enterprising organisation can make a pretty penny off of computer recycling.Having a glue that allows parts to be melted off in a basic oven would considerably reduce the costs of recycling the components of a computer. Yes, a lot of components cost only a penny. These aren't the components they're interested in; if possible, they get hucked in the smelting pot. Things like CPUs, memory, and other more complex circuits (if you think nobody is saving those CPUs when computers get recycled/discarded, guess again) have a great deal of value to a computer recycler, though. The estimate of "hundreds of dollars" per computer may be a tad inflated (perhaps for discarded servers or high-end machines), but there is still very real income potential for recycling home computers, easily in the $50-100 range. If a company can squeeze an extra $15 of saved labor out of each computer, that's a serious boost to profitability.
$ man reality
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Which class?
I had him for ENGRI/MSE 124... He's one of the top three professors I've ever had, if not #1.
Really smart guy, *amazing* lecturer.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
This sounds very convenient, but how much of the recyclability problem is in the glue? I always thought it was in the toxic materials used for making ICs, the PCBs in the circuit boards, and the lead in monitor glass.
"The biggest obstacle is the glue that binds components to the circuit board"
Funny, I always thought that stuff was called "solder."
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
I've always found that the easiest way to get rid of old computers is to donate them to schools, relatives etc - does that count as legal disposal?
Note to the humor-impaired: This was intended to be a joke...
Black holes are where God divided by zero
It is really an unfortunate paradox that many of the most interesting ideas never see mass production because of entrenched methodology. The PCB industry is huge and established. Conventional PCB manufacturing is well understood and cheap.
To overhaul one of the most fundamental building blocks for modern technology would be an amazingly tough thing to do. For starters, the technology would have to be cheaper and integrate seamlessly with existing manufacturing processes.
If you want to recycle parts, why not just heat the parts to just past the melting point of solder, then suck the parts off the boards?
Just imagine one real gung-ho Quake3 session with your PC overclocked and your pride and joy will fall appart before your very eyes.
mv
There are several problems with this. Landfilled microcomputers (and monitors and printers and scanners) take a lot of space due to their cases. Ungluing components from the circuit boards would not save any landfill space.
Then consider the economics. The estimation of "hundreds of dollars" in a computer's components would be absurd for microcomputers, and that must be what the article is talking about if there will be "64 million computers" hitting landfills. If you carefully unglued all the resistors, capacitors, transistors, and chips off a motherboard, they'd be worth nothing, because it would take more work to sort them, test them, ship them, and load them for automated placement than it could possibly be worth. Even new, many of these parts cost around a penny. CPUs are the most expensive part, and you can already unplug them, yet hardly anybody does when the computer is obsolete. And if the components really were valuable, you could "unglue" them today just by heating up the solder.
Maybe the glue will have some use somewhere, but it's certainly nowhere near the landfill panacea the article portrays.