INBOARD is a new and exciting technology for tracking electronics from PCB manufacturing to end of life. This collaborative research and development project involving several key UK electronics companies, a recycler and Loughborough University has demonstrated a new technology that enables information about an electronic product to be stored and accessed all the way from the initial printed circuit board manufacturing stage to end of life and recycling. The Technology Strategy Board supported INBOARD project has developed a novel product and process monitoring system with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) embedded into the Printed Circuit Board. This technology enables relevant information to travel with the product across the whole electronics manufacturing supply chain including printed circuit board manufacturing, assembly, and original equipment manufacturing (OEM), use and end of life /recycling. The RFID tags can be used to monitor and optimise manufacturing processes, track components, locally store life-cycle information and support dismantling and recycling. By using these embedded components, it will be possible to reduce the lifecycle costs of manufactured products radically by increasing observability.
5,632
2008-05-01 to 2011-07-31
Feasibility Studies
This project will deliver breakthrough developments in new, low emission, low energy, environmentally benign routes for the treatment of polymer scrap. By using ''highly tuneable'' ionic liquids, polymer materials will be specifically extracted from appropriate waste across all parts of the supply chain. The project has 3 strands: treatment of post-industrial composite packaging waste; separation of heavy metal additives from recovered PVC; production of polymer powders from separated polymer waste. For each strand, processes and their impact under the ZEE approach will be delivered in exploitable ''technology packages''. By capitalising on these developments, this industry-driven consortium will enable the UK polymer industry to lead in reducing its reliance on key feedstocks, reducing energy consumption by allowing the reuse of materials without their degradation, and in some cases, without harmful additives that may limit their application.