Life cycle analysis is an appropriate way to clear obscure facts about an element. Gallium is a critical element which is used in many technologies these days and therefore quantification of main global cycles of gallium, production, consumption and end of life products, also investigation about recycled gallium content and potential recycling possibilities are investigated in this paper. First a qualitative substance flow for gallium is designed similar to other metal cycles with regards to exclusive characteristics of gallium flows itself. USGS and World Mining Data are mainly used to get information about gallium production, main gallium consumptions and end of life products. Subsequently a quantitative model in STAN should unlock many uncertainties. Substance flow analysis and material flow analysis give a better understanding of unknown gallium flows with their uncertainties and meanwhile major applications, concentration of gallium in different products, waste flows, landfills and present recycling technologies are detailed. Consequently STAN model asserts that main gallium flows are primary gallium production and refined gallium production in production process, Integrated Circuit board fabrication, Light Emitting Diodes, Photovoltaic and recycled new scrap flow in manufacturing process. A significant amount of gallium is collected as stock in consumption process. Also current gallium recycling facilities are limited as recycling is not economically justified. Moreover main part of recycled gallium content is collected from new scrap which is formed through manufacturing process. Finally gallium consumption in Photovoltaic and Light Emitting Diodes industry increases rapidly and sustainability demand cost efficient methods for gallium recycling from solar cells, diodes and other end of life products.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kth-171838 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Yaramadi Dehnavi, Pouya |
| Publisher | KTH, Mark- och vattenteknik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | TRITA-LWR Degree Project, 1651-064X ; 2013:23 |
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