The shock wave frag­men­ta­tion process mar­ket­ed by Impul­sTec can also be used to treat devices con­tain­ing haz­ardous indus­tri­al mate­ri­als into their indi­vid­ual com­po­nents, so that the valu­able sub­stances can be sep­a­rat­ed from the haz­ardous parts and recov­ered. This sug­gests a vari­ety of pos­si­ble appli­ca­tions of shock wave tech­nol­o­gy to improve the effi­cien­cy of exist­ing process­es or devel­op entire­ly new recy­cling approaches.

Since the process is con­duct­ed with­in a flu­id frag­men­ta­tion medi­um, Li-ion bat­tery cells for exam­ple can be safe­ly dis­man­tled, which also offers the pos­si­bil­i­ty of func­tion­al recy­cling of the recov­ered active mate­r­i­al as well as mate­r­i­al based recy­cling of the com­po­nents. Fur­ther­more, the shock wave process can also be used for the gen­tle dis­as­sem­bly of assem­blies con­tain­ing haz­ardous sub­stances, in order to sub­se­quent­ly enable a sep­a­rat­ing pro­cess­ing of haz­ardous and non-haz­ardous components.