European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization

Collection, logistics & treatment requirements for end-of-life household appliances containing volatile fluorocarbons or volatile hydrocarbons
 N EN 50574-1

Annotation

Introduction

This document establishes requirements for the transportation, sorting and treatment of household appliances containing volatile fluorocarbons or volatile hydrocarbons after they have been discarded as waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).

The methodologies for the inspection of the performance of treatment systems for household refrigerators and freezers in step 2 treatment was developed in the early 1990s. The methodologies used for performance tests since then have been created to evaluate the efficiency of treatment plants designed to recover VFCs from insulating foam. The evaluation criteria used for performance testing are based on the VFC content of household refrigerators and freezers that were produced in the 1970s and 1980s.

The increasing appearance on the recycling market of appliances with VFC-free insulation (foamed with VHC) has had a strong impact on the general framework conditions for performance testing over the last few years. In the early 1990s the quantity of R11 (a VFC) was reduced by approximately 50 %. R11 was then largely phased out in favour of VHCs in the early 2000s.

Consequently the expected values from step 2 treatment that had been achieved in the 1990s are no longer applicable for the appliances that are recycled today. Nowadays more and more VFC-free appliances and appliances containing reduced quantities of VFC come back for recycling.

The WEEE within the scope of this standard could contain substances that if released untreated to the atmosphere could contribute to ozone depletion or global warming. The substances may be present in the refrigerating system and in insulating foam. This standard seeks to reduce the environmental impact caused by such WEEE by defining requirements covering sorting, transportation, handling and treatment. It covers how substances with a high global warming potential and/or ozone depletion potential are removed from WEEE and subsequently treated so as to significantly reduce environmental impacts.