Ponencias

URI permanente para esta colección

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14454/1637

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Examinando Ponencias por Materia "Circular economy"

Mostrando 1 - 3 de 3
  • Miniatura
    Ítem
    Collaborative Robots in e-waste management
    (Elsevier B.V., 2017) Álvarez de los Mozos, Esther; Rentería Bilbao, Arantxa
    Nowadays manufacturing companies are going through an increasing public and government pressure to reduce the environmental impact of their operations. But when dealing with e-waste, some difficulties arise in classifying and dismantling electronic devices. Manual operations are financially prohibitive and full automation is also discarded due to the lack of uniformity of the disposed devices. A halfway solution is to let a human operator and a robot share the process. The goal of this research is the optimization of the recycling process of electronic equipments, applying both technical and economic criteria, and taking into account the latest developments in collaborative robots.
  • Miniatura
    Ítem
    Human-robot collaboration as a new paradigm in circular economy for WEEE management
    (Elsevier B.V., 2019) Rentería Bilbao, Arantxa; Álvarez de los Mozos, Esther
    E-waste is a priority waste stream as identified by the European Commission due to fast technological changes and eagerness of consumers to acquire new products. The value chain of the Waste on Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) has to face several challenges: the EU directives requesting collection targets for 2019-2022, the costs of disassembly processes which is highly dependent on the applied technology and type of discarded device, and the sale of the obtained components and/or raw materials, with market prices varying according to uncontrolled variables at world level. This paper presents a human-robot collaboration for a recycling process where tasks are opportunistically assigned to either a human-being or a robot depending on the condition of the discarded electronic device. This solution presents some important advantages; i.e. tedious and dangerous tasks are assigned to robots whereas more value-added tasks are allocated to humans, thus preserving jobs and increasing job satisfaction. Furthermore, first results from a prototype show greater productivity and profitable projected investment.
  • Miniatura
    Ítem
    Sustainable consumption by reducing food waste: a review of the current state and directions for future research
    (Elsevier B.V., 2020) Álvarez de los Mozos, Esther; Badurdeen, Fazleena; Dossou, Paul Eric
    Almost one third of all food produced in the world currently goes to waste. One of the targets under the 'Responsible consumption and production' sustainable development goal calls for halving the per capita food waste at the consumer level as well as across the supply chain from manufacturing, storage and retail by 2030. While numerous strategies have been recommended and implemented to address this problem, major challenges remain to be overcome. The paper presents an in-depth review of current state-of-art practices in food waste management. The solutions and recommendations presented to reduce food waste at the household, retail, restaurant, manufacturing and supply chain levels are reviewed. Regulations and regional variations in food waste management practices are also examined. The findings are used to identify research gaps and propose a conceptual framework to increase closed-loop material flow for more circular food systems that can reduce food waste. Potential areas for application of engineering and management principles to develop analytical models for food waste reduction are also discussed.