Day 2 - EMP Recycling Plant
Visiting the EMP Recycling Facilities
The morning of day 2 was spent getting to know EMP Recycling, one of our partners in this adventure.
EMP Recycling is part of Elemental Holding Group, a global urban mining and recycling group.
What is Urban Mining?
Urban mining is the process of recovering rare metals (found in the discarded Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) through mechanical and chemical treatments.
Just to get a sense of scale: In 1997, recycled gold accounted for approximately 20% of the 2700 tons of gold supplied to the market. (Renner et al.)
Recoverable materials
Single-use vapes are some of the worst offenders in terms of material waste.
Mechanical separation of materials based on size/weight
Content warning: loud noise! 🔇
Consider muting if you are using headphones.
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The afternoon of day 2 was spent designing, customizing and 3D printing some parts for the peristaltic pump that we would use to dispense sanitizing gel, as well as the driver that would power the pump.
The base design for the 3D pump that we used as a starting point for our customization is the Nema 17 peristaltic pump - by Neodyme from thingiverse.
⚡ Killing and reviving a laptop (in under 20 minutes!)
Day 2 also involved some iterations on the electronics we designed the day before.
Unfortunately, due to an accident with one of the jumpers, we ended up connecting 12V from our external power supply INTO one of our laptops.
The laptop died immediately and refused to turn on despite numerous attempts.
After the initial panic, and the thoughts of unrecoverable damage, some of our colleagues from IAAC FabLab Barcelona told us that this happens sometimes and that most laptops have safety mechanisms to protect themselves from situations like these.
One of the standard ways to restore the laptop requires opening the case and disconnecting/reconnecting the laptop’s internal battery. If you ever find yourself in this situation, don’t panic! You can do it. Just to give you a sense of the difficulty: The most difficult part was finding the correct screwdriver. If you want detailed step by step instructions, ifixit.com is a great starting place, with step by step instructions for most devices (old and new).
You can do it!
This is my face of relief after seeing that everything was easily fixable using standard tools and without requiring a visit to a “Genius Bar”.
Remember folks, right to repair is your friend.
Jump to day 3
And with this, we have reached the end of Day 2!
Jump to day 3 to see how we integrate all the components into a single enclosure.