In these years it's clearly emerged at Obsolete Technology Tellye ! that we traded a superior technology for an inferior one...................
Also todays is emerging the fact that it may better NOT sending to recycling your Old CRT Tv.
A tidal wave of televisions is headed for the electronics hereafter. As the United States / Europe transitions to all-digital TV, the shutdown of analog broadcasting happened actually won't affect most televisions in the countries , 87 percent of U.S. / European television-watching households already get their TV through cable or satellite or aerial . Nevertheless, the deadline is perhaps the most significant nail in the coffin for one of the most successful consumer electronics products of the 20th century: the cathode-ray tube (CRT) display. The digital changeover is by no means a mandate for the elimination of old-school sets, but it will certainly bring a lot of people into electronics stores to shop for new digital TVs typically flat-panel LCD crap and plasma sets, and that means that a lot of tube televisions are moving toward obsolescence or moved to dump.
How many CRT televisions are out there? ...... It's hard to say. People don't always dispose of old televisions. Many still work, but have been pushed into attics or closets by fresh-off-the-shelf HDTVs shit. In an attempt to gain perspective, I took a look at some Environmental Protection Agency estimates on televisions—and, trust me, the numbers are staggering. The EPA has sales figures back to 1980, and since then, 704.9 million CRT televisions have been sold only in the U.S. and a minor quantity in Europe An estimated 42.4 percent of those are still in use. In 2008, the EPA estimates that 23.9 million tube TVs will be disposed of by Americans (that's 711,029 tons of televisions). Numbers for end-of-life TVs have been over 20 million per year since 2005, and are expected to go up to almost 25 million by 2010. Compare this to 10 years ago, when the numbers were closer to 12 million sets disposed of per year.
Thank heavens or hell , you're probably thinking or not at all, for recycling programs that take those old TVs and keep their toxic materials out of landfills. Not so fast. According to the EPA's estimates for 2006 to 2007 (the latest years for which information is available) only 18 percent of TVs (by weight) were recycled. The rest went to landfills. And 18 percent is considered an improvement, since the recycling rate from 1999 through 2005 was only 15 percent. The EPA concludes that this 3 percent improvement is probably due to mandatory collection and recycling programs for electronics.In the grand scheme of American garbage, TVs are only a drop in the bucket. All e-waste (including TVs, printers, monitors—even cellphones) makes up only 2 percent of the municipal solid-waste stream. But CRTs are a significant drop. Up to 8 percent of the weight of a television tube is lead. This lead is largely trapped in the glass of the set—ironically, CRT glass contains lead to block the emission of harmful X-rays.
So long as the lead is locked within the glass of a CRT, it presents no real threat, but if 711,029 tons of CRT TVs were disposed of in 2008, and only 18 percent were recycled, then 583,044 tons of CRT TVs found their way into landfills. If 8 percent of that weight is lead, that means 46,643 tons of lead is deposited inside fragile glass ampoules in landfills each year.
And CRT TVs are really only half of the story. In 2008, 19.5 million CRT computer monitors were also disposed of. LCD crap computer screens became the norm before flat-panel TVs, so the peak of CRT dumping in the PC world occurred in 2005 when 28.5 million monitors were tossed.
As a result of the replacement of cathode ray tube
screens (CRTs) by flat screens, the world is
confronted with stranded end-of-life CRTs. CRTs contain 1 to 1.5 kg of lead per screen; mainly found in the funnel and neck glass for radiation protection purposes. The lead content makes this CRT glass
unsuitable in most glass applications. Thus, there is an urgent need for alternative recycling options that are able to use up the CRT leaded glass while safely retaining the lead out of contact with humans and
the environment.
Figure 1 sketches a CRT and the different types of glasses that it comprises.
As a result of a technological replacement, the recycling of CRT glass into new CRTs is no longer possible . Large amounts of end-of-life CRT must therefore be recycled into other products or disposed of. The recycling or disposal of the CRT leaded glass is of particular concern as the high PbO content makes the glass unsuitable for most current
glass applications .
Lead is a toxic heavy metal, which causes adverse
effects to human health when inhaled or ingested. The Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake
(PTWI) for lead determined by the Joint Food and Agriculture/World Health Organization Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) has been dropping since a first led toxicity assessment in 1972. In accordance with new scientific evidence relating lead to irreversible health damages in humans, currently, the JECFA declares that it is not possible to establish a PTWI for lead that would be
considered health protective. Given the quantities of the toxic metal lead in CRT
leaded glass and the shrinking lead exposure limits, an updated review of the recycling routes in which CRT leaded glass is used in other products, with a particular focus on the fate of lead during use, is necessary.
The use of CRT leaded glass as concrete aggregate would represent the largest demand for such glass among the options considered, followed by lead metal extraction and the use as aggregate in clay brick manufacturing. However, lead is not indispensable for neither concrete nor clay bricks.
In the case of concrete, CRT leaded glass would replace 10% of the volume of fine aggregates, which in turn represent 30% of the volume in concrete. In the case of clay bricks, CRT leaded glass would replace only 3% of the mass of sand, which represents 55% of the mass in clay bricks. Thus, the large demand for CRT glass in these two products is mainly due to the large masses of product worldwide. According to definition of recycling by the European Waste Framework Directive, and taking into account that lead does not accomplish a function in concrete or clay, the potential low mass fraction replacements (however leading to a large mass replacement due to the large
quantities of the construction materials produced worldwide) represent a “dilution” of CRT leaded glass into vast amounts of other materials rather than a recycling of it. Nevertheless, provided that the leaching of lead from these products is kept under regulated limits, these options may be considered as interim storage of CRT leaded glass instead. The lead would be entrapped in the concrete and clay matrixes until the end of life of construction structures, from which the final,
environmentally sound, disposal of lead must be guaranteed.
CRTs cost more to recycle than the commodities inside them can be sold for, meaning that old TVs have a net negative recycling value. And new guidelines for the amount of lead exposure that is safe for humans have cut down on the total number of possible uses for leaded glass (ECS's workers have their blood tested for lead content quarterly).
Maybe you took your old TV to a community e-waste collections center after you upgraded to a flat-screen. If the collection center was responsible, maybe it sent that television to recycling factory . If it wasn't, maybe that TV eventually ended up in a Closed ring.
Demanufacturing the televisions is hard manual labor that works as a reverse assembly line, as the components from these old TVs are separated by hand and moved down a conveyor belt. First, they use a crowbar to remove the back case. They cut, strip, and sort the power cords. They remove internal screws with drills. What's left of the TV is then hammered, to separate the front screen from the cathode-ray vacuum tube. They strip the wires for copper. Wood will eventually be composted or turned into sawdust. Plastic is put through a shredder so that it can be melted. A handheld grinder spews sparks as it separates the screen from whatever is left of the tube. Then, more smashing this time, the glass.
They run the glass through an ultraviolet-light chamber on a conveyor belt to determine whether it contains lead. This lead content about four pounds per television, and difficult to separate from the glass itself has caused an ongoing economic and environmental problem for the nation's electronics recyclers.
The results of this critical review point out that the more compelling recycling options are the usage of CRT leaded glass as smelting flux and as source for lead metal extraction; provided that lead leaching from slag is kept under regulated limits and that the demand for secondary lead is granted.
Products in which lead does not accomplish a function should not be considered as recycling options but as interim storage; such as concrete, clay bricks and foam glass.
Options such as nuclear waste vitrification require additional analysis regarding the indispensability of lead and the ultimate benefits related to radiation shielding. Disposal options represent an environmentally sound treatment for CRT leaded glass. However, in cases in which the glass in mixed with other hazardous wastes, these options diminish the future availability of lead. In general, it is still necessary to carry out assessments of the industrial upscaling and economic feasibility of the options in which lead accomplishes a function. Additionally, to assure a stable throughput of CRT leaded glass for the specific products, a country or regional based
assessment of the current stock and expected end of life flows of CRT screens is necessary.
If there is a silver lining here, it's that leaded glass can be recycled if you're willing to pay for it. Many recyclers in the US send their processed CRT glass to a Spanish company called Camacho, which uses it as part of the filler in ceramic tile. An Indian company called Videocon is the last remaining company in the world still producing new CRTs using recycled glass. The glass-to-glass recycling facility of Videocon has been a major receiver of CRT glasses from the US. The company used to consume nearly 108,000 tons of CRT glasses per annum, which in turn were used towards manufacturing new CRT televisions. The company had announced abrupt closure of furnaces in October 2015
in order to perform heavy maintenance activities at both the furnaces and cullet equipment. Videocon is the only company in the world to make new CRTs by recycling old ones. The Bharuch facility had been a key outlet for US CRTs over the past several years.
And leaded glass can be used as a flux at mining facilities or in lead-acid batteries.
What should scare us, though, is that newer electronics are more difficult to recycle than CRTs, not easier. In the quest to make thinner devices, batteries which catch fire if put through a recycler's shredder are glued down and are hard for recyclers to remove; they're also used in an increasing number of electronics.
Some want the televisions traced back upstream to the recycling centers where consumers originally dropped them off. But this solution will bankrupt more companies and could eventually push the cost back onto the original generator of the waste: us.
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[Accessed: 03-Jun-2014].