Impact of Societal Electrification on Future End-of-Life Products : Disassembly and Recycling of Electric Motors with a Focus on Copper Flows

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines the copper flow and recycling process, and their importance as society undergoes electrification, specifically within the European Union. The study begins with general information on copper and its current recycling process, before focusing on electric motors in two categories: Vehicles and Electrical and Electronic Equipment. Data on the quantities of these products over the past years and the amount of copper in them were collected. Forecasts to 2050 were created to predict how the market for both vehicles and EEE would evolve independently in the future. These forecasts highlight a significant concern: copper demand in the EU is expected to increase amid the current focus on electrification. The most critical issues identified are the difficulty in separating copper and other materials from end-of-life vehicles and the poor collection rate for WEEE. After these were identified, the forecasted issues were investigated and possible areas for improvement were proposed. This study is not without its flaws, and as such they were discussed in order to measure the impact they may have had on the results. With these, the reliability of numbers provided is questionable, but the trends shown are without question clear.