Repair and recycling of PCBs and their components based on obsolescence index: a domestic electrical appliances case study

Population expansion and improving living standards, particularly in developed nations, have led to an increase in the usage of domestic electrical equipment, worldwide energy consumption, and CO2 emissions per capita. To limit the usage of non-reusable components and the amount of garbage that must be transferred at the end of a product's life cycle, longer-lasting electrical domestic appliances are a pillar of the circular economy. In recent years, the complexity of printed circuit boards (PCBs) used in the manufacture of modern electrical devices has increased, leading to an increase in device failures. This study focuses on the maintenance and recycling of domestic electrical appliance components and printed circuit boards. The proposed methodology for PCB repair is defined as a sequential quadratic programming (SQP) problem implemented in MATLAB environment and successfully tested to a variety of domestic appliances such as refrigerator, dishwasher and washing machine. The possibility of recycling metal parts of electronic components, which were replaced after PCBs' repair was also studied. Metals' percentage concentration of PCB electronic components for three customer's budgets considering metals and valuable metals recovery as given from the corresponding average metal recovery and calculated from different recycling procedures presented in the literature. The results of the proposed procedure in terms of valuable metals gave 38.4078 ppm of silver. We also compared the suggested procedure with other works in terms of environmental perspective considering four measures, namely the gross energy requirement (GER), the global warming potential (GWP), the acidification potential (AP), and the solid waste burden (SWB). In terms of economic perspective and considering the existence of silver (Ag) in the electronic components, the recommended method gave comparable amount of money. Finally, a comparison of different recycling works from a technical viewpoint is also conducted. Moreover, a reparability index of domestic electrical appliances is introduced to further quantify the results of the proposed algorithm.

Men Purchase, Women Use: Coping with Domestic Electrical Appliances in Rural China

Based on a field study in a village in the northern plain of China, this paper reviews three different types in how Han-Chinese rural people have coped with domestic electrical appliances during the last 40-odd years of electrification. The aim of this paper is to offer an ethnographic study of the complex relations between technology and social life in a Chinese rural setting and to explore the logic and dynamics whereby rural populations confront and integrate new technical products into their everyday life. This paper is divided into three main parts: following the introduction on the “everyday technology approach” and background information about the field site, the author next gives a brief historical description of the electrification process in rural China. The third part is dedicated to the ethnographic data concerning five appliances: electric light, water pump, TV, washing machine and water boiler–cooler. The paper concludes with a discussion of issues concerning appropriation of new technology in the wider background of society/economy/state and everyday habitus, questioning how well conventional oppositional dichotomies like female/male, masculinity/feminity serve as analytical frameworks.