Recycling 4.0 - Digitalization as a Key for the Advanced Circular Economy

Abstract

Recycling will become more and more important in the future. To fulfill the requirements of a more efficient recycling process and thus enable an eco-friendly handling of resources, modern technologies can be used. One of these modern technology streams is called Industry 4.0. This paper presents an approach to how Industry 4.0 can be integrated into recycling processes, resulting in Recycling 4.0. Electric vehicles and their traction batteries are used as an example. To enable a more efficient disassembly and recycling of these traction batteries, information about the battery is exchanged along the supply chain. A key issue is the development of a marketplace to exchange the information. Another topic is the connection of a robot to the information marketplace. On the one hand, the robot can get information from the marketplace for decision-making in the disassembly of traction batteries. On the other hand, the robotic system is capable of analyzing the condition of the battery, so it is also possible to transmit information from the robot to the information marketplace.