Center Overview
The Center for Resource Recovery and Recycling (CR3) focuses on the sustainable stewardship of resources. Its mission is to help industry address a pivotal societal need — the need to create a sustainable future. CR3 advances technologies that recover, recycle, and reuse materials throughout the manufacturing process, from initial product design through manufacture to end-of-life disposal. These advancements help businesses reduce energy costs and increase profitability, while protecting our natural resources.
CR3 does this by collaborating with industry to:
- Explore and develop basic recovery and recycling science, engineering, and education.
- Develop technologies to identify and separate valuable materials from waste streams.
- Build strategies and technologies to enable greater use of process effluents within materials process systems.
- Establish materials recovery and recycling curricula along with university research experience that will create an engineering workforce equipped to address the challenge of achieving cost-effective and profitable materials sustainability.
Center Personnel
Dr. Brajendra Mishra
Center Director
508-831-5711
bmishra@wpi.edu
Carol Garofoli
Director of Operations
508-831-5592
garofoli@wpi.edu
Dr. Corby Anderson
Site Director - Colorado School of Mines
406-491-4002
cganders@mines.edu
Dr. Bart Blanpain
Site Director - KU Leuven
-44
bart.blanpain@kuleuven.be
Dr. Gjergi Dodbiba
Site Director - University of Tokyo
-12843
dodbiba@sys.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Research Focus
CR3 research is making breakthroughs for a sustainable future — recycling plasma display panel materials, recycling and recovering lithium-ion batteries, dezincing galvanized steel, recycling magnet separation technologies, recovering metal using automated sorting, recovering zinc and ion, and more.
CR3’s research focus areas include:
- Alloy recycling.
- Automated sortation.
- Inorganic polymer performance.
- Metal fines recovery.
- Permanent magnets.
- Phosphors.
- Photovoltaics.
- Resource efficiency.
- Secondary raw materials.
Current research projects
- Alternative fluxes for lead bullion refining.
- Copper separation from steel.
- Electro-oxidation of metals and inorganics in metallurgical operations.
- Moisture analysis of heterogeneous solid material flows.
- Near real-time detection of elements in pure metals and alloys at concentrations below parts per million.
- Optimization of concrete mixtures for 3D printing.
- Optimized sorting and separation technologies for remanufacturing with product-centric recycled and reclaimed scrap.
- Recycling of waterborne paint sludge.