Collaborative Research: I/UCRC Phase II: Center for Resource Recovery & Recycling

材料资源回收和循环利用是21世纪可持续发展的迫切需要。材料是不可再生的，但它们在对国家和全球经济重要的每个行业和产品领域都有重大影响。进行资源回收和再循环以及为其提供设备和技术的行业包括广泛的公司，其中很大一部分是中小型企业。超过56,000家这样的公司从事资源回收和再循环的某些方面，生产价值2360亿美元的商品，在初级和下游产业雇用121万人。资源回收和再循环中心(CR3)的目的是通过跨部门参与资源回收和再循环价值链来处理这些机会。资源回收和再循环技术的广泛应用影响到所有材料制造，包括金属、塑料、纸张、电子、玻璃、有机物、聚合物和化学品等。在资源回收和再循环领域，存在许多关键的行业挑战。具体地说：*原料材料的稀缺和材料资源成本的增加*工业过程和报废产品产生的废物数量不断增加*需要关键材料的资源回收、再利用和循环利用的解决方案*需要能量有利、环境兼容和经济可行的工业过程。在传感器、计算建模、模拟和可视化、大数据和分析、先进材料、自动化和机器人等领域的新技术日益快速的发展提供了潜在的重大影响，可以极大地扩展能力，并提高材料资源回收和循环的效率，除了开发用于分类的物理和化学过程外，还有利于所涉及的行业，选矿和选矿以及价值提取。构成资源和回收领域的行业往往根据它们所进行的材料回收和再循环的类型进行分类，并且主要是中小型企业。因此，它们不仅往往缺乏进行所需研发的资源，而且那些现有的先进制造技术也没有在工业中实施的自然途径。CR3将资源回收和再循环领域的关键支持者聚集在一起，开发面向行业的全面技术转移途径。CR3的主要重点是钢铁、有色结构金属、轻金属、稀土和光伏金属、高价值难熔金属和电子材料等关键行业，在这些领域，技术开发将解决产品制造废物、消费后废物、仪器仪表、传感器和控制、拆解设计和变废为宝的问题。

Materials resource recovery and recycling is a critical need for sustainable development in the 21st Century. Materials are not renewable and yet they have major impacts in every industry and product area important to the national and global economy. The industries that carry out resource recovery and recycling as well as supply equipment and technologies for it comprise a broad range of companies, a large fraction of which are small and medium enterprises. Over 56,000 such companies, engaged in some aspect of resource recovery and recycling, produce $236 billion in goods, and employ 1.21 million in primary and downstream industries. It is the purpose of the Center for Resource Recovery and Recycling (CR3) to address these opportunities through cross-sector engagement in the resource recovery and recycling value chain. Resource recovery and recycling technologies have widespread applications impacting all materials manufacturing, including, metals, plastics, paper, electronics, glass, organics, polymers & chemicals, etc. There are a number of key industry challenges in the area of resource recovery and recycling. Specifically: * Scarcity of feed stock materials and increasing cost of material resources* Increasing amounts of waste from industrial processes as well as end-of-life products* Need for solutions for resource recovery, reuse, and recycling of critical materials* Need for energetically favorable, environmentally compatible and economically viable industrial processesThe increasingly rapid development of new technologies in areas such as sensors, computational modeling, simulation and visualization, big data and analytics, advanced materials, automation, and robotics offers potentially significant impacts that could greatly expand the capabilities as well as increase the efficiency of materials resource recovery and recycling and benefit the industries involved in addition to development of physical and chemical processes for sortation, beneficiation and concentration as well as value-extraction. The industries comprising the resource and recovery area tend to be disaggregated based on the type of materials recovery and recycling they carry out, and are predominantly small and medium enterprises. Therefore they not only often lack the resources to carry out the needed R&D but also those advanced manufacturing technologies that are available do not have a natural route to implementation in industry. CR3 brings together key constituencies in the resource recovery and recycling area to develop comprehensive technology transfer pathways to industry. The primary focus of CR3 is on key sectors of iron and steel, non-ferrous structural metals, light metals, rare-earths and photovoltaic metals, high-value refractory metals and electronic materials where technology development will address the product manufacturing wastes, post-consumer wastes, instrumentation, sensors and controls, design for disassembly and conversion of trash to treasure.