Solar Industries and Tetronics Collaborate for Plasma Plants

Tetronics Ltd has announced collaboration with Solar Applied Materials (News - Alert) Technology Corp. Tetronics supplies Direct Current or DC plasma waste recovery plants for the treatment of hazardous waste and metal recovery. Taiwan’s Solar Applied Materials Technology Corp is one of the world’s top players in precious metal and rare material refining.

Opportunities for utilizing Plasma technology will be investigated through this partnership. Valuable metals from Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment or WEEE sources and industrial/auto catalysts across a number of countries in the Far East will also be extracted.

Precious Metals or PMs including Platinum Group Metals or PGMs will be recovered for subsequent final refining with a Plasma plant. Installation of the first Plasma plant in Taiwan is currently underway. Any hazardous organic material, like dioxins etc. that may be contained within the waste material will be also destroyed with the patented Plasma technology.

In a release, Dr Ma, COO for Solar, said, “We are not simply buying a plasma solution, we are more importantly building on an already strong partnership with Tetronics that will see us leveraging other spent catalyst and related opportunities in Taiwan, China and further afield. Tetronics’ support has been essential to the Solar team and will be instrumental in progressing these opportunities going forward.”

According to Dr Ma, the refining technology is important to the company. Higher levels of technical recovery than any competing technology are provided by Tetronics’ plasma solution.

Stephen Davies, CEO for Tetronics said, “Tetronics is proud to have been selected as a long-term partner with Solar, one of the world’s fastest growing players in precious metal and rare material recovery. We believe our plasma technology is ideally suited to support Solar in their continued rapid growth plans.”

The valuable material in electronic waste can be symbiotically and preferentially separated and recovered with the process chemistry in Tetronics’ plasma recovery technology. At the same time any hazardous components are also destroyed. In a single processing step, the remaining non-valuable material is vitrified into Plasmarok, an inert, safe disposable non-hazardous material. Outstanding plant longevity is delivered due to the robust level of construction and minimal number of moving components.