Ship Scrapping – Recycle Circuit Boards, Electronic Equipment

ABB helps turn electronic scrap into gold for Boliden

Boliden is currently ramping up a new plant adjacent to its existing electronic scrap recycling facility at the Rönnskär copper smelter in northern Sweden - an expansion that will almost triple recycling capacity from 45,000 metric tons to 120,000 metric tons a year, making it the largest e-scrap recycling facility in the world.

Rönnskär is an integrated metallurgical complex, which smelts and refines metals from mined copper concentrates and from recyclable materials like metal shred and electronic scrap. E-scrap comes from computers, mobile phones, circuit boards and other electronic equipment and contains metals such as copper, gold and silver.

The pre-sorted and pre-shredded e-scrap is smelted at Rönnskär using Boliden’s proprietary Kaldo furnace technology. After smelting, the molten metals are transferred to the adjoining production lines for processing into high-grade products.

ABB has played a significant role in the Kaldo plant expansion and at the Rönnskär complex as a whole. For the new Kaldo plant, ABB has supplied a comprehensive range of process-critical power and automation technologies, including the process control system.

The entire e-scrap recycling process is controlled by ABB’s 800xA Extended Automation System, and includes customized features such as remote operation of the process and an exact positioning system to prevent spilling of molten metal from the furnace.