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PROFESSOR
CASE BESCHRIJVING
OF RESOURCES & RECYCLING PETER REM
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p04 - 95 autumn 2015
PROFESSOR OF RESOURCES & RECYCLING PETER REM
Garbage studies
At the moment, recycled materials account for approximately 15%
of the total value of the supply of raw materials in Western Europe.
Within 20 years, half of the raw materials used in the region should
come from recycling. As Professor of Resources & Recycling at TU
Delft, Peter Rem, with his team of researchers, dedicates himself to
discovering innovations that will help meet that ambitious target.
With outstanding results.
Text Rob de Boer Photography Maarten Corbijn
95 autumn 2015 - p05
PROFESSOR OF RESOURCES & RECYCLING PETER REM
W
ith Peter Rem’s appointment as Professor of Resources
& Recycling at the beginning of 2012, TU Delft was
responding to the wishes of the Dutch government to make a
contribution to the EU’s target of generating half of the raw
materials processed in Europe from recycling within 20 years.
His new chair in Resources and Recycling immediately confronted Rem with a huge challenge: to research and develop
new technologies capable of increasing the share of Europe’s
raw materials produced through recycling. With his background as a physicist in the faculty of Civil Engineering and
Geosciences at TU Delft, it is a subject that has engaged Rem’s
attention for a long time. For example, with a colleague he
developed a new method of classification that was able to separate fine bottom ash in incinerators and the non-ferrous metals
it contains, such as aluminium and copper, very efficiently and
without the use of chemicals. In 2008, this method, which
Rem patented, was licensed to Inashco, a company whose
workforce has since grown from one employee to 250 and
which now operates worldwide.
That sounds good. Would you not have
preferred to market the invention
yourself?
“There are people who can do that, but my ambitions lie elsewhere. In my current role, I am concerned with the scientific
aspect of the story, but also with the implementation of new
technology in society and raising political awareness. The problem for scientists is that fully developing an innovative technology often takes too long. It also requires a lot of money. The
challenge for me lies mainly in bringing together scientists,
industry and the board of the university in a joint effort to
transform a new concept into an innovation. That is how I see
the role of the university.”
You were appointed as Professor of
Resources & Recycling almost four
years ago. Can you tell us what
contribution the chair has made to
achieving the EU’s objectives in this
field?
“When we started, our stated aim was to create innovations
capable of producing new raw materials from waste with an
annual financial value of 10 billion euro within 20 years. That
is less ambitious than it seems when you consider the total volume that is needed. At present we produce 60 billion euro
worth of raw materials from recycling in Europe, and that figure will have to rise by a further 120 billion euro if we are to
achieve the target of 50%. To give you an example: Inashco’s
technology can produce new raw materials worth roughly a billion euro every year. We will therefore have to take a totally
different approach to recycling. We are talking about a totally
new industry that is expected to generate around 600,000 jobs,
p06 - 95 autumn 2015
and it will all have to come from innovations by companies and
universities in Europe. That is precisely why I am so pleased
that they have joined forces.”
A new industry. It sounds like a modern
form of mining.
“You could certainly look at it like that. There is a reason why a
concept like urban mining is receiving so much more attention,
although recycling calls for totally different technologies than
mining. I know from my background in physics that the discipline offers a great many new possibilities. However, separating
diverse products in such a way that we can re-use half of the
materials remains a complex process. We are also often talking
about very small particles. There is already technology that is
capable of doing this, but it is very different from the machines
that are currently used. We still have a long journey full of innovations ahead of us.”
So how realistic is the EU’s target of
generating half of the total value of raw
materials from recycling within 20
years?
“Just as realistic as John F. Kennedy’s ambition when he said in
the early 1960s that the United States would be the first country to put a man on the moon. Expressing such a target is the
essential first step in achieving it, since it is immediately clear
what steps have to be taken and what obstacles have to be overcome to reach your goal. I am personally convinced that it is
possible. Recycling has existed for a very long time, but we only
started doing it systematically in the 1970s. We are also making
relatively rapid progress. At the beginning of 2000, recycling
only accounted for 3% of the raw materials in Europe in terms
of value, which is a negligible amount. But ten years later recycling’s share had already grown to 15%. That growth has ensued
mainly from the realisation that recycling requires its own technology and research. ”
You refer to the financial value of raw
materials rather than volumes. Is that a
conscious choice?
“Yes. At a certain point the political choice was made to express
recycling performances in terms of volume. That decision was
connected with the intention to eliminate landfill sites. It was a
good starting point for recycling, but it is now time to make the
transition to expressing performance in terms of value. That is
now the trend. We are all agreed that we want to recover as
many raw materials as possible from a product in order to make
new products from them. Naturally, we also want to be able to
measure the results, but there are many different ways of doing
that. How you measure something depends on what you intend
to do with the results. u
PROFESSOR OF RESOURCES & RECYCLING PETER REM
C.V. Peter Rem
P.C. Rem is a professor at TU Delft and
holds the chair in Resources & Recycling.
There are 14 people working in his
research group, including PhD students
and post-doc researchers, who have a
fully-equipped Recycling Laboratory.
Peter Rem earned his PhD with a thesis
on the subject of superconductors and
formerly worked in the petrochemical
industry. He has published academic
articles for physics journals on subjects
such as superconductors, neutron
spectroscopy, mechanics and
electrodynamics and on applied science
relating to mineral processes and
recycling. Peter Rem holds more than a
dozen patents relating to process
technologies and equipment. Roughly
half of them are already used in industry.
95 autumn 2015 - p07
PROFESSOR OF RESOURCES & RECYCLING PETER REM
For example, if you are concerned about the ecological footprint of a product and its component materials, it makes more
sense to also measure the footprint of the recycled raw materials. You can also investigate how much energy it takes to recycle
raw materials and how much energy you can save by using
them in a new product. At TU Delft we advocate using a mix
of all those factors, so we propose measuring recycling on the
basis of an economic value expressed in euros. That gives a balanced impression of the effect of recycling in terms of new jobs,
fewer imports and energy saving. In this way, everyone knows
what is meant and everyone can see what the efforts to recycle
yield in financial terms. For example, we can see that Dutch
households spend a lot of time separating plastic waste but that
it only generates a few euro per capita in raw materials on an
annual basis. This method of measuring might also have
become outdated in 20 or 30 years’ time if the targets have been
met. By then we might find that other factors are more important and will have to reformulate our political wishes accordingly. At present, however, Europe is concerned with value and
a strategic supply of raw materials.’
Do you not expect that linking
recycling and financial value will be
counter-productive? Market actors
could reach the conclusion that new
raw materials are cheaper.
“The opposite is more likely. If recycling is not cheaper than
mining, it won’t be done anyway. That is how market forces
work and one of the reasons why we are not concerned with the
question of whether developing a new technology is complex,
but whether it is economically feasible. Is it possible, and what
will it cost? Those are the key questions we address in our
research.”
Many sectors are already performing
well in terms of recycling. Are there still
industries that could quickly do more?
“There is a lot more that could be done in the building sector,
for example. In the last four years we have developed an installation with which concrete can be recycled to a high standard.
It is worth the effort, since concrete consists largely of cement,
which accounts for 10% of total worldwide emissions of CO2.
The trick therefore is to convert end-of-life concrete into new
concrete without those CO2 emissions. A first installation
based on our test set-up is now being installed at Strukton in
Hoorn. It is located adjacent to a plant operated by Heidelberg
Cement, which processes the recycled material into new mortar. A new apartment complex was recently built with a car park
constructed from recycled concrete. In other words, it is economically viable. That is clever, since the recycling process must
not cost more than around six euro a ton. You can only achieve
that with large volumes, with an installation that can recycle
150 to 200 tons an hour. Concrete recycling has the potential
to deliver new raw materials worth around three to four billion
euro a year in Europe. That would be a major step forward, but
it will require parties in the concrete chain to form partnerships
and no arrangements have yet been made in that regard.”
p08 - 95 autumn 2015
From the outset ARN has devoted a great deal of effort to establishing a strong chain of dismantling companies and shredders.
It has also made a lot of progress with the post-separation of
shredder waste at the PST plant. What are your feelings about
this approach?
“Car recycling is a good example of what is possible if the government sets specific targets for an industry and assigns responsibility for meeting them to a particular party. ARN quickly
realised that you need both a good chain and technology if
recycling is to be worthwhile and economically viable. The
Netherlands is a pioneer in Europe with the approach it has
taken and now also has a real say in this field. One reason for
that is the fact that the Netherlands is a small country where car
dismantling companies have always been highly visible, which
has given greater urgency to the search for a solution than in a
country with more space.”
To what extent are you engaged in a
search for new applications for recycled
raw materials? Or do you concentrate
purely on developing technologies to
improve recycling?
We are purely concerned with the recycling of materials. However, a recycled material sometimes differs fundamentally from
the primary material and then we also explore potential uses for
it. Mortar based on recycled concrete is an example of that. For
technical reasons it hardens more quickly, making it ideal for
pre-fab applications. Otherwise, we concentrate on the processes and technologies relating to recycling.
Are you also searching for solutions to
make streams of recycled materials
purer?
“Indeed we are. We currently focus mainly on plastics. The
problem with recycling plastics is that there are so many different polymers. We are currently investigating whether we can
improve methods of separating them by using sink/float technology in a liquid with varying densities. We have already
applied for a patent for this method. This is also a worthwhile
field of research, since perhaps two billion of the 85 billion euro
worth of plastics used in Europe every year comes from recycling, so there is a lot of room for improvement there. Increasing the purity of material flows is also important for adding
value. At present, at the end of many processes there is a residue
comprising many different materials. They could also be recovered, although those last few percent are the most difficult and
most expensive to retrieve. But the necessary innovations will
come. The hard work starts now.” t
PROFESSOR OF RESOURCES & RECYCLING PETER REM
95 autumn 2015 - p09