Recycling of goods containing iron. Technological aspects

After taking an analytical approach to the recycling of ferrous materials in the article [M 7 059] , highlighting the causes, motivations and constraints, we propose to deal with the technological aspects of implementation.

In this article, we present the organization of scrap metal collection and what makes it so efficient. We then look at the various ways in which end-of-life capital goods and consumer products can be processed into scrap of a quality that meets the specifications of steelmakers and foundries. We'll then look at how scrap consumers have defined their quality criteria, with the essential notion of use value, and what techniques they have at their disposal to measure the quality of the batches of scrap they receive. Finally, we'll look at the avenues explored by Research and Development to improve scrap quality and make it more regular. This improvement is necessary, as the quantities of scrap available for recycling increase over time, while the growth in demand for new steels is expected to slow down once all regions of the world have reached "post-industrial" development. At that point, a greater proportion of scrap will be used to produce different types of steel, some of which require perfect control over the quality of the raw materials, which is not yet the case for all categories of scrap.