HardAssetsInvestor

Written by Tom Vulcan  |

February 03, 2011

Kris Van den Broeck: The Benefits Of Metals Recycling

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Umicore's sales manager of Special Metals – New Markets and Products explains why recycling will play an increasingly important role in the metals markets.

 

HardAssetsInvestor.com recently had the opportunity to chat with Kris Van den Broeck, sales manager of Special Metals – New Markets and Products, at Umicore Precious Metals Refining (a division of the Belgium-based Umicore Group), that operates as one of the world's largest precious metals recycling facilities.

 

Tom Vulcan (Vulcan): What metals do you refine at your facility in Hoboken, near Antwerp?

Kris Van den Broeck (Van den Broeck): We recover here some 17 metals. With the addition of gallium, I like to call it now 17½. But we'll come to that later.

We refine precious metals (gold, silver and five platinum group metals; i.e., platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium and ruthenium); special metals (indium, selenium and tellurium); and, together with arsenic, antimony and bismuth, the base metals copper, lead, nickel and tin. But we do not produce base metals for the sake of base metals; we use them in the flow sheet* as collector metals to refine other metals—primarily precious metals.

Vulcan: Would you describe your new CIGS [copper, indium, gallium and (di)selenide] production scrap recycling flow sheet at Hoboken?

Van den Broeck: For many years we have been a very large producer of indium, selenium and tellurium. The first industrial operation started some time in the ‘70s. We have a capacity of some 50 tonnes of indium per year, 600 tonnes of selenium (including grades going from the technical grades that are used in the glass and pigment industries, to the more high-purity grades used in optics and photovoltaics [PVs]). And then we are also one of the largest producers of tellurium worldwide, with a capacity of 150 tonnes per year.

Vulcan: So then you decided to look at the CIGS world to see if you could offer a recycling service?

Van den Broeck: Yes. Because we are a selenium supplier to many PV companies, we also try to help them with the issue of production waste. So, we started collecting samples and working with our research and development department to develop a new flow sheet. And, since 2009, we have been recycling that kind of material on an industrial scale. We specialize here in Hoboken in treating complex raw materials, preferably including precious metals, but, in this case, they are complex enough for us to handle without their containing precious metals. By the way, in this case, some of these special metals (I refer to indium), tend to have prices almost as high as those of precious metals.

Vulcan: Of the metals you recycle, which are the most difficult to recycle and which the easiest?

Van den Broeck: Within the world of CIGS production scrap—a niche market within a niche market—the most difficult one is selenium, due to metallurgical considerations and also the need to pay specific attention to certain environmental aspects of its processing and transportation.

Vulcan: And the easiest?

Van den Broeck: I don't think any of them is very easy, because I don't have confirmation that another company can recycle at the size that we can today. Our capacity today, on an industrial scale, is 50 tonnes of this type of waste.

For reference, here in Hoboken, each year we treat about 300,000 to 350,000 tonnes of incoming materials.

We recognized both that there are some CIGS producers that have similar material available, and that this material is complex enough for our organization. At first you need your special flow sheet to separate the metals. And then you need your processes to start, once again, from the separated intermediate products to go to further high-purity materials.