CODDE® 🏷️Electric & Electronics

FROM MINE TO RECYCLING

Cartographier l'empreinte environnementale d'un produit électrique n'est pas chose aisée.

Les cartes électroniques contiennent une variété de matériaux, notamment des métaux précieux (or, argent, palladium), des métaux lourds (plomb, cadmium, mercure) et des résines. De plus, leur fabrication implique de nombreuses étapes tout au long d'une chaîne de valeur complexe et mondialisée.

Une connaissance détaillée des cartes électroniques et de leurs composants est alors cruciale pour :

  • Connaître l'empreinte environnementales des produits électriques et électroniques
  • Concevoir des produits plus durables

This is why LCIE Bureau Veritas provides Life Cycle Inventory datasets to enable each equipment to be modelled transparently and specifically.

Since 2011, the EU has been establishing a list of raw materials critical to its economy, revised every three years. In 2023, this list now includes 34 materials (including 16 strategic raw materials), four more than in 2020.

DATASET OVERVIEW

Printed wired boards

The CODDE®database contains more than 90 data related to the manufacturing of printed wired boards.

  • Areas covered: China, Europe, and France
  • Resin types: CEM1, FR2, FR3, and FR4
  • Number of layers: 1 to 12 layers, and up to 20 layers for FR4 PCBs

Comparative example of 4, 8 and 12 layer printed wired boards (FR4 resin, China):

Semiconductors

The CODDE®database contains more than 100 data related to semiconductor manufacturing.

  • Areas covered: China and France
  • Technology: silicon wafer, 20-mask etching
  • Package: more than 30 packages available (TQFP, LQFP, PQFP, TSSPO, LFGBA, PBGA, VFBGA, VFQFPN, etc.)
  • Dataset configuration: most data has one primary parameter (number of components) and one secondary parameter (component mass)

Example of use dataset with « CODDE-0372 Ceramic pin grid array, CPGA; China, CN». The CODDE-0372 dataset data allows to represent the impacts of the references: CPGA 64, CPGA 68, CPGA 84, ... up to CPGA 319.

LCIE Bureau Veritas provides a component selection assistance file to identify components and configure LCI datasets.

Other active components

In addition to semiconductors, the CODDE® database has datasets related to the manufacturing of active components.

  • Area covered: China and France
  • Component types: diodes, transistors, thyristors, relays

Example of datasets:

Connectors

The CODDE®database contains more than 90 datasets related to the manufacturing of connectors.

  • Areas covered: China, Europe and France
  • Connector types: RJ45, VGA, HDMI, USB (mini, micro, type A/B), etc. Male/female differentiation.
  • Regulations: RoHS compliant

Example of datasets:

LCIE Bureau Veritas has also developed generic connectors (plastic or metal housing connector, medium composition) to compensate for the lack of information during data collection.

APPLICATION CASE

Here is an application case made with EIME:

  • Product: Tablet
  • Country of manufacture: China
  • Stages studied: Manufacturing, Distribution, and End of life
  • Indicators studied: EF 3.1 indicator set with an analysis of normalized and weighted results

Les résultats, normalisés et pondérés selon la méthode EF 3.1, permettent de classer les indicateurs selon leur ordre d'importance :

1. Abiotic resource depletion potentials, elements (ADP-e, 38.25%)
2. Global warming potentials (GWP, 21.85%)
3. Abiotic resource depletion potentials, fossils (ADP-f, 11.95%)
4. Water use (WDP, 11.53%)

The contribution analysis makes it possible to identify the main contributors to these 4 indicators:

  • Manufacturing of LFBGA and VFQFPN semiconductors (from 30.27% to 96.23% of impacts)
  • Manufacturing of LCD touch screens (from 1.38% to 44.24% of impacts)
  • Manufacturing of other electronic components, excluding semiconductors (from 1.06% to 19.13% of impacts)
  • Manufacturing of printed wired boards (from 0.37% to 4.61% of impacts)

A detailed analysis of the ADP-e indicator allows the identification of critical materials:

  • Gold (screen, semiconductors)
  • Silver (screen)
  • Tin (printed wired board)
  • Copper (printed wired board)
  • Trace <1.0% : antimony, cadmium, molybdenum

All of these results contribute to a better understanding of the product's environmental impact. Designers implement eco-design actions on priority components.

Explore other EIME database