Study on the resource potential of high-tech minerals based on dynamic material flow analysis:a case study of waste computers

High-tech mineral resources have become the indispensable key raw materials for the development of national strategic emerging industries.There are many kinds of high-tech mineral resources in waste computers, which have a wide development and utilization prospect.With the development of the social economy and the improvement of people’s living standard, China has become the world’s largest computer production and consumer country, with a large number of scrap computers every year.Therefore, in this paper, on the basis of differentiating the desktop computer and the notebook computer, dynamic material flow method is used to estimate the scrap volume of different types of computers and the social stock of high-tech minerals in China.The influence of recycling methods on recycling efficiency is discussed.The research results show that China’s total number of computer scrap is more than 1.4 billion from 2010 to 2019.From 2010 to 2019, the total social stock of all kinds of high-tech minerals accumulated in waste computers in China exceeds 4 600 t.With the transformation of the recycling methods and the improvement of recycling efficiency, all kinds of high-tech mineral resources accumulated in waste computers will become an important source of national strategic key minerals in the future.This paper puts forward some reasonable suggestions for the scientific and rational development of various kinds of high-tech mineral resources accumulated in waste computers in China, and looks forward to the future research direction.