FAILURE ANALYSIS AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT: A CASE STUDY IN THE FIELD OF WEEE TREATMENT

The treatment of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) is a topic of interest for researchers and practitioners due to directives and laws addressing Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) end of life management along with the necesity of executing optimal management in order to assure profit to companies operating in such a field. Nevertheless, only recent contributions have proposed technologies and operative procedures for WEEE treatment. As a consequence wide data bases concerning occuring failures are rare. In this paper data concerning failures occuring in a WEEE treatment plant operating in Modena (Italy) are collected for a period nine months. Specifically, technologies and operative procedures for the treatment of Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) containing devices (i.e. televisions and computer monitors) and refrigerating devices are studied. Finally, corrective actions and modifications in adopted facilities and operative procedures are proposed, by supporting the study with the assessment of the environmetal impact associated with the presence or the absence of the main failures.