Reverse Metallurgy

Comet Traitements is coordinating the Biolix project to produce copper from metal waste, in particular end-of-life vehicles and waste electrical and electronic equipment. Supported by the Walloon Region, the project aims to produce 750 tonnes of high-quality copper cathodes per year, using an innovative process developed with the University of Liège. Biolix is part of Wallonia’s vision to become a “Recycling Valley”.

The Plasmetrec project aims to develop plasma furnace technology to recover critical non-ferrous metals from waste. Hydrometallurgical processes will be developed to optimise metal recovery. The prototypes test the industrialisation of the processes and explore potential sources for the future. Integrating zinc into products maximises added value.

Construction of an automated and robotised sorting platform for metal alloys from the recycling of end-of-life vehicles and electrical and electronic waste In addition to the raw materials and metallurgy aspects, this sorting platform is part of the digital transformation and touches on the fields of imaging, artificial intelligence, robotics and big data. This has been achieved successively through a pilot line at laboratory level, a larger prototype and, soon, the construction of an industrial demonstrator at a cost of €9.4m, capable of sorting 1.5 billion individual pieces of metal scrap per year. This demonstrator, supported by a Coopilot project (RW-Feder), will be implemented at the Comet Traitements operating site in Obourg, in partnership with Citius Engineering and Metheore (a ULiège spin-off).