A Technical Evaluation Framework for Recycling Technologies

This project seeks to develop a framework for determining a temporal hierarchy of technical recycling constraints and corresponding recycling parameters (recycling rates, recycled contents, and environmental benefits), develop a consistent quantitative methodology for defining the performance of recycling technologies, and collect sufficient material flow, composition, and recycling technology data to demonstrate the framework by evaluating the merits of emerging metal and polymer recycling technologies for select scrap streams.

Upon completion, this project aims to validate the Python‐based Recycling Constraint Evaluation Framework (RCEF) model containing the metal and polymer case study results that can be easily adapted to any material stream, an excel‐based Recycling Technology Performance (RTP) model (input to the RCEF model) containing a quantitative description of >11 emerging recycling technology processes and that can be easily adapted to add new technology definitions, and a published report on A New Framework for Evaluating Recycling Constraints and the Efficacy of Emerging Recycling technologies.