Article 5 - Overview Of Recycled Copper : Copper Applications in Health & Environment

Scrap metal recycling is considered a great industry for monetary reasons. Copper recycling have been put into practice for since mnay years ago. This is duely due to its high market value in comparable to any other metals in the scrap recycling industry. Besides copper other metals recycled usually varies from aluminium, alloys, tin and as such.

The transforming of unalloyed copper scrap into new copper items is done by purchasing copper scrap from a national network of scrap processors and brokers. Number 1 scrap consists of clean, unalloyed and uncoated copper solids,clippings, punchings, bus bars, commutator segments, clean pipe and tubing. No.2 copper scrap is same as Number 1 with additional oxidized or coated, plated pieces including oxidized or coated copper wire free of excessive oxidation.

IN US, most copper and copper alloy scrap (in 1996) is remelted directly by brass mills, wire rod producers, foundries and ingot producers. Wheres the remainder goes into the supply stream at the smelting and refining stages. Of the 1,092,600 tons of scrap that was directly remelted in the US in 1996, about 22% was recycled into ingot cast copper alloy products by producers and foundries, 70% was recycled by brass mills and about 8% was reused by other industries, powder-producers and by wire rod mills. Consumption of copper scrap for alloys has grown by over 50% in the past 20 years. Increased consumption by brass mills directs for all of the additional scrap consumed. Scrap going for cast products has remained the same copper alloy cast by-products.

At normal circumstnces, the largest category of scrap is found to be the customer returned new scrap which is directly remelted. The continuation of recycled old or obsolete scrap tends to fluctuate depending on copper prices and other commercial considerations. Recovery rates of old scrap decline when copper prices are low. Old scrap, also called post consumer scrap, consists of discarded electric cable, junked automobile radiators and air conditioners and innumerable other products. This is known as low velocity material with product life of 10 to 100 years or more. The trend had been toward more old scrap and less new in the recycling stream. Of total US scrap that was recycled in 1992, new scrap has decreased from 61% to about 54% but this again increased to 61% in 1995 and 1996.

The one significant drawback of using recycled copper is that it may contain trace impurities that adversely impact its properties. Due to that, some applications require newly mined or primary copper or scrap copper that has been re-refined or re-smelted. The most important of these applications is high conductivity wire.

To conclude, from the past experience, it is estimated that about 700 billion pounds of copper have been mined to date with the majority of it being in use as of today. The copper and copper alloy industries rely on the fact that scrap copper is easily and economically used and reused from time to time. However this scrap metal of copper industry has some draw backs such as the fluctuations of the market price for copper as been experienced recenltly in Malaysia due to our economy drop. For this, the scrap metal dealers and suppliers need to think wisely to sustain their business in order to gain monetary profits and also to help save our environment by recycling significant activities.