Urban Mining
Extract Value from Waste
Incineration Bottom Ash
Today, cities' municipal solid waste (MSW) is predominantly incinerated to recover energy and save landfill space, generating a vast quantity of incineration bottom ash (IBA) that can be mined for materials. However, IBA also contains harmful pollutants that need to be treated before utilization.
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ZA's proprietary WCI process is a cutting-edge IBA upgrading technology. It recovers valuable metals, removes pollutants from IBA, and transforms IBA into various construction materials for road, concrete, and land reclamation use. This will greatly prolong landfill lifespan and reduce reliance on virgin materials.
Non-incinerable Waste
Non-incinerable wastes (NIW), including ash, slag, sludge, and catalysts, are byproducts of various anthropogenic activities. They are often landfilled or stockpiled, taking up enormous space. These solid wastes are reservoirs of mineral resources.
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With ZA’s advanced urban mining technologies, NIW can be transformed chemically or thermally into high-value artificial aggregates as alternative materials in construction and gardening.
E-Waste
Technology is a two-edged sword. With the advancement of IT, IoT, renewable energy, and electrical vehicles, the market demand for Li-ion batteries, solar panels, phones, and computers has soared. As a consequence, the end-of-life disposal of these e-wastes has become a global burden.
Our proprietary metal recovery technologies not only efficiently extract valuable metals e.g. silver, gold, palladium, nickel, cobalt, and copper from e-waste, but also tackle the toxic components in the wastes to minimize their risk to the environment and human health.
Landfill Mining
Landfill, which takes in all the excess produced by human civilization, is the grave of misplaced materials. Since landfill space is getting increasingly scarce and natural resources are depleting quickly, it is time to shift our mining focus from nature to landfill.
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ZA’s landfill mining expertise includes conventional and geophysical site investigation, 3D modeling of site composition, excavating and processing landfilled wastes for material recovery, and hazardous waste and wastewater treatment. We turn waste graves into new material cradles and regenerate landfill space.
