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Recycling critical raw materials from waste electronic
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16% in the period 2011-2020 and 11% in the period 2020-2030. According to the
conservative scenario around 84 billion LEDs would be manufactured in 2030, in the more
dynamic market development scenario around 271 billion.
Table 31: Number (billion LEDs) of WLEDs produced and projections for the three scenarios A, B and C
Projection
Number
2006
Number
2009
Number
2011
Number
2020
Number
2025
A (ISI 2009) 15 21 25 45 62 84
B (ISI 2009) 15 21 25 97 162 271
C (Young 2011) - 24 71 164 164 165
Number
In order to test the validity of these calculations, another market study (Young 2011)
containing an estimate of the number of GaN chips produced can be referred to. As the main
application of these chips is in white LEDs, it is assumed that these estimates can be applied
directly to the number of white LEDs manufactured. This estimate assumes a growth of
around 95% for 2009 compared to 2008 which declines roughly exponentially in subsequent
years and in 2015 is only 9% compared to the previous year. This scenario C is therefore
even more dynamic than scenario B described above in the initial phase of the forecast, but
then becomes saturated more quickly. Starting from around 24 billion WLEDs in 2009, this
then gives 71 billion WLEDs produced in 2011 (see Table 31). If this development is
extrapolated (reduction of the annual growth rate by 50% by 2015), it produces around 164
billion WLEDs manufactured in 2020, and around 165 billion WLEDs in 2030. This means
that in the long term scenario C lies between the two scenarios A and B (ISI 2009) and
therefore lends support to the order of magnitude of their estimates.
2030