Project 2 Feasibility of Using RFID to Facilitate Individual Producer Responsibility For Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Presented by: Kieran Houlihan ID Number : Date: 15/10/13

Paper Reviewed The paper I studied was: “Feasibility of Using RFID to Facilitate Individual Producer Responsibility For Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment” “Feasibility of Using RFID to Facilitate Individual Producer Responsibility For Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment” Authors: Maurice O’Connell, Colin Fitzpatrick, Stewart Hickey, Maria Besiou and Luk N. Van Wassenhove

What is RFID?  Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a technology that can be used for facilitating WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment)  In the future, reading of the serial number will allow the operator at the civic amenity site to connect to a database such as the “EPC Discovery Services” and to source the manufacturer of the product and access relevant information specific to that product, such as the brand and model and can be linked to a database that provides information on how to dismantle the product and the location of hazardous materials.  How RFID works is that an operator working at a civic amenity site for example scans electronic waste that have RFID tags built into the products using an RFID reader

What is RFID? Shown to the left is an example of an RFID reader. Shown to the right is an example of an RFID tag.

Challenges in the use of RFID  A major obstacle is the nature of the storage of electronic equipment at civic amenity centres, where equipment is stored in open-top steel cages, with contents placed in the cage as they are returned by consumers (as mixed WEEE) and given the random nature of the placement in storage cages, some unreadable tags are inevitable. Equipment mixed in large amounts proves difficult to accurately read RFID tags

Challenges in the use of RFID  Metal in the surrounding environment significantly reduces readability, especially of UHF tags  The limitation of distance range of the RFID reader and physical limitations require that the reader be closer than 1 m to read a RFID tag on a product.  Extremes of temperature and humidity can also impede tag detection and undermine the reliability of the system.  Tags need to be readable regardless of their orientation  Antennas on the readers detuning from their operating resonant frequency, most likely as a result of radio frequency variations, signal strength losses due to metal proximity, harmonic effects and signal reflection. Studies investigating the tagging of EEE durables have also reported reflection, absorption and detuning effects caused by metal

Challenges in the use of RFID  The price and quality of tags to be used will need to be standardized across manufacturers in the electronics industry.  The RFID tags that are to be used in electronic equipment will need to be standardized in order to avoid creating perverse incentives for producers to use unreadable tags in their products thus enabling producers to evade paying recycling fees attributed to their products.  It is estimated that by 2022, 6 million readers are anticipated to be in use, with 86 billion tags purchased annually.  Reading reliability must be prioritized as a short term research goal, ensuring standardized performance between tag batches as well as reader technology variations.  The long term economic feasibility of RFID also faces challenges. IPR that incorporates RFID will require industry agreement on the cost, technology, and privacy and security concerns before technology infrastructure can be rolled out.

Important Research Findings   A study conducted by the European Committee of Domestic Equipment Manufacturers (CECED) in 2003 concluded that no tagging system is available now or in the foreseeable future to meet the current operational requirements for disposal and logistics of WEEE (CECED 2003). As a result, EOL identification is more difficult at the civic amenity site.   New research from the University of Limerick has now shown that a read rate higher than 30% can now be achieved using RFID in a harsh EOL (end of life) waste environment   Researchers from the University of Limerick conducted field trials at the Mungret civic amenity site on the outskirts of Limerick, where mixed WEEE and white goods entering the site are separated before their respective storage and loads are weighed using a weighbridge. White goods are housed in 20- to 40-foot containers, while mixed WEEE is stored in open- top steel cages before transport to the recycling facility.

Important Research Findings The above table lists the different tags used and the attributes associated with these tags

Important Research Findings The handheld reader checked an inventory of 25 white goods in a 20-foot container with 100% accuracy, regardless of the type of metal-mount tag used (SARC-3, SL, E&C)

Conclusion  SARC-3 tags exhibited the longest read distance, providing read ranges in excess of 3 m when applied to both plastic and steel ranges in excess of 3 m when applied to both plastic and steel substrates. substrates.  SL tags recorded the second longest read distance (2m)when applied to the same materials, and exhibited improved orientation sensitivity (+90◦, −90◦) when compared with SARC-3 tags (+45◦,−60◦). applied to the same materials, and exhibited improved orientation sensitivity (+90◦, −90◦) when compared with SARC-3 tags (+45◦,−60◦).  The orientation sensitivity and the maximum read distance were determined from the experiments for each specific combination of tag type and material. determined from the experiments for each specific combination of tag type and material.  The IT asset management and SL minitags had limited read ranges on both metal and plastic and were therefore not used for the field trials.

Conclusion  The results indicate that current RFID technology can support EEE product identification in the business to customer WEEE management domain, given the high read rates achieved.  From a technical standpoint, RFID can contribute to the identification of brands and therefore support a system that allocates recovery costs to individual producers, thereby facilitating IPR, even for mixed WEEE.  In the white goods WEEE category, 100% readability was accomplished, which meets the requirements of the ideal IPR scenario with 100% brand recognition.  Full-scale adoption and standardization within the white goods industry would facilitate the identification of brands for IPR following the incorporation of Embedded UHF RFID tags.

Conclusion   In the case of mixed WEEE, 100% brand identification was not achieved in the field trials. Different tags on different products were read in each scanning sweep.   Mixed WEEE placed into steel WEEE cages in a random fashion, leads to a vast number of possible product placement combinations that could not be accounted for in the testing.   When tags are densely surrounded by products in an almost enclosed environment, the antenna’s behavior is altered, reducing the power linked to the integrated circuit on the tag, which consequently undermines the probability of a positive readout.   Read rates achieved varied from 50% to 73%, depending on the UHF metal-mount tag employed and the relative positioning of the tags within the cage.   Overall, higher read rates than in the past were obtained

The End Questions…