Potential for Urban Mining in Norrköping : a Static Quantification of Metal in Subterranean Infrasystems

Sammanfattning: As the society’s demand for metal increases, the rate of mineral extraction will do the same. This contributes to environmental implications in the form of emissions and depletion of finite natural resources. Conventional recycling is a common practice used to reduce the need for extraction of metal ore and in turn reduce the environmental impact. Recycling is an important source to satisfy the metal demand; as much of 30 % of the metal demand is covered by recycling in some markets. Another form of recycling is the practice of urban mining. A practice which includes recycling of society’s stocks of unused but not discarded metal, these unused amounts metal is part of a so called hibernating stock. An example of a very large stock is the infrasystems in the shape of power cables and pipes. The objective of this thesis is to quantify the metal stocks of copper, aluminium and iron in subterranean infrasystems in the city district of Södra Butängen in Norrköping. Also, a quantification for Norrköping as a whole is performed but on slightly different infrasystems. An economical valuation of these stocks is also performed. The Municipality of Norrköping has the ambition to transform this small industrial area, that Södra Butängen is today, into to a sustainability profiled residential and commercial area which opens up an opportunity to recycle the infrasystems when all buildings are removed and the ground is dug up. To fulfil the objective of the thesis, and quantify the metal stocks, so called static quantification was used. The infrasystems to be included in this study were chosen and the data describing these systems was collected from the respective owner of the systems. The gathered data consists of maps which were digitalized with GIS-software using ArcMap 10 where the stocks then were quantified. The results show that the infrasystems in Södra Butängen holds almost 600 tons of metal with an economical value of 4.67 million SEK. For the Norrköping quantification the results shows that the stock contains about 30,000 tons of metal. The economical value is a little over 70 million SEK. The hibernating stocks in Norrköping equals to 5,100 tons of metal and a value of 9.5 million SEK. There is a potential for urban mining in Södra Butängen that should be considered. However, there are some issues that also must be considered, like cost of extraction. There are large stocks of metal that not have been possible to identify in this thesis. This includes the power grid for Norrköping; a valuable stock due to its large copper content.