WEEE Recycling: Research, Development, and Policies

Professor Alexandre Chagnes has an extensive background in electrochemistry and hydrometallurgy, having worked in France and Canada before becoming an Associate Professor at Chimie Paristech from 2005 to 2016. Since 2016, he has been a Full Professor at Université de Lorraine, where he has held several leadership roles, including Director of the national network on extractive metallurgy and Director of the Research Program on Circular Economy. He founded the start-up WEEEMET, focusing on innovative metal recycling processes. His research primarily targets recycling lithium-ion batteries and e-waste, with significant contributions through publications and talks.

ENSCP - IRCP - 11 Rue Pierre et Marie Curie 75005 Paris.Gerard COTE, senior professor, has been working over thirty eight years in the field of hydrometallurgy. He is currently Deputy Director of the ENSCP in charge of industrial relationships and project leader of the ParisTech Chairs “Nuclear Engineering and “Urban Mines supported by AREVA and Eco-systèmes, respectively. He is author of 170 publications in peer-reviewed journals (130) and proceedings (40) in the field of solution chemistry and separation science and is inventor of 3 international patents.

Christian Ekberg is a full professor in Industrial Materials Recycling (since 2007) as well as a full professor in Nuclear Chemistry (since 2012) at Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden. He is also an elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy for Engineering Sciences. The main research focus on the last 25 years has been solution chemistry of the lightest to the heaviest elements in the periodic table (thermodynamics, solvent extraction etc) as well as statistical uncertainty analysis. In later years the focus has started to include recycling processes from various sources as well as the new Gen IV nuclear reactor systems. He has published more than 120 reviewed scientific papers.

Mikael NILSSON is an assistant professor in the department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at University of California Irvine. He has more than 10 years of experience in liquid-liquid extraction, both fundamental science and process development. His research spans materials recovery from used nuclear fuel, production methods for medical isotope, radiation damage in liquid-liquid extraction processes, and new routes for rare-earth recovery from mine tailings. He is the former chair of the Separation Science and Technology subdivision of the ACS. At UCI he maintains a group of ~10 PhD graduate students in the UCI Nuclear group and teaches courses in Nuclear Fuel Cycles and Nuclear and Radiochemistry, as well as Advanced Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics and Chemical Engineering Lab classes.

Teodora Retegan is a researcher (PhD) at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden since 2009 in Nuclear Chemistry and Industrial Materials Recycling group. There she conducts research related to extraction and separation of metals by means of solvent extraction from different streams like: spent nuclear fuel, electronic waste (WEEE), mining industry (primary and secondary sources) and secondary waste from industrial processes. She has been working in close relation with industry and is/has been leading or contributing to numerous projects related to industrial applications. She de facto supervising 3 PhD students in industrial recycling and is referee for 2 more (industrial design and recycling of nuclear waste). She is acting as reviewer for scientific journals and different national or international (European) funding bodies. She is also the recipient of two national Environmental prizes for Strategies for discarding of WEEE, especially smaller electronic devices (2010) from Renova and for Recycling and detoxification of waste fluorescent lamps and CFLs (2014) from The Foundation of King Carl XVI Gustaf's 50th Anniversary Fund for Science, Technology and Environment.