An economic model for end-of-life management of printed circuit boards

The end-of-life (EOL) management of electronic products is of great concern not only to governmental agencies but also to OEM´s with legislations coming into place. This paper describes the activities involved in the EOL management of printed circuit boards and its recycling process. The various activities are classified into activity centers and the economic model is built upon. The proposed economic model is divided into cost and energy models respectively. The purpose of this model is to apportion costs to the outputs obtained after recycling accurately and also give a clear picture of the energy consumption utilized by the recycling process. This model can aid PCB recycling companies in their process optimization and their EOL strategies by providing accurate picture of cost and energy consumptions.