Phase II Industry University Cooperative Research Center for Resource Recovery & Recycling (CR3), Worcester Polytechnic Institute

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The U.S. Government, academia, domestic industry and the public increasingly acknowledge the imperative that we conserve energy and natural resources while exercising judicious stewardship of the environment. The issue of sustainability is and should be paramount in how we design, manufacture, use, and retire the many products consumed within the United States and throughout the world. Unlike solar or wind energy that can be cost effectively harnessed for a long time or agricultural products as a natural resource, inorganic materials, such as metals and minerals, are not renewable. Therefore, the need exists for the development of technologies to address materials recovery and recycling. Although considerable coordinated academic research is rightly underway to meet energy challenges, university efforts to build the basic science and technologies for materials sustainability are less extensive and fragmented despite the prospect for significant energy and environmental ramifications. Research supporting materials recovery and recyclability is inherently multidisciplinary and must respond to the needs of a multiplicity of commercial stakeholders from throughout the supply chain. CR3 brings together four leading universities with expertise in materials science and engineering. The industrial application of new advanced materials will require an increase in the efficiency of materials resource recovery and recycling to achieve a circular economyThe advanced manufacturing technologies that are available today 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, energy materials and photovoltaic metals, high value refractory metals and electronic materials. Technology development addresses the product manufacturing wastes, post-consumer wastes, instrumentation, sensors and controls, design for disassembly and conversion of trash to treasure. 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 processes. These challenges are addressed by CR3 through the development of physical and chemical processes for secondary resource sortation, beneficiation and concentration, as well as value-extraction. Recycling technologies have widespread applications affecting all materials manufacturing, including, metals, plastics, paper, electronics, glass, organics, polymers & chemicals, etc.