Development of inherent safety assessment index for e-waste recycling process: flammability parameter

Development of inherent safety assessment index for e-waste recycling process: flammability parameter

SYAZA IZYANNI Ahmad, ENGKU SYIFA HAYANI Engku Saifuddin, MARDHATI Zainal Abidin, MUHAMMAD FIRDAUS Husin

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Abstract. Nowadays, the usage of electronic devices such as computers and mobile phones are crucial in the daily life especially with the growing internet usage globally. The worldwide e-waste production is anticipated to be around 20 to 25 million tonnes per year and is expected to rise through the decade. Increasing amount of e-waste will become a major concern due to its harmful impact to the environment as well as human health. Investigations on the impact of e-waste recycling process in terms of flammability parameter is currently lacking. The objective of this work is to develop an inherent safety assessment index focusing on the flammability parameters assessment of e-waste recycling process. The inherent safety assessment index developed focused on the flammability value of every chemical used in e-waste recycling process particularly the hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy processes. Logistic function was used in developing the scores for flammability evaluation of e-waste processes. In this scoring index, higher flammability score indicates higher hazard. A simple case study was conducted to compare the flammability level of two e-waste recycling process, namely Process A and Process B. Process B has higher Total Flammability Score than Process A indicating it as more hazardous due to the existence of hydrochloric acid and cyanide in the process than Process A with only hydrochloric acid as its flammable chemical in terms of flammability level. This indicates that the inherent safety assessment index produced can be used to conduct preliminary evaluation on the flammability level of chemicals involved in an e-waste recycling process particularly the hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy processes. However, to achieve a more comprehensive inherent safety assessment, this index needs to be equipped with several others inherent safety assessment parameters for example explosiveness and toxicity.

Keywords
Flammability, Inherent Safety, Index Scoring, E-Waste Recycling Process, Logistic Function

Published online 5/20/2023, 8 pages
Copyright © 2023 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA

Citation: SYAZA IZYANNI Ahmad, ENGKU SYIFA HAYANI Engku Saifuddin, MARDHATI Zainal Abidin, MUHAMMAD FIRDAUS Husin, Development of inherent safety assessment index for e-waste recycling process: flammability parameter, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 29, pp 370-377, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644902516-42

The article was published as article 42 of the book Sustainable Processes and Clean Energy Transition

Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

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