The environmental assessment of two new copper recovery processes from Waste Printed Circuit Boards

Advanced Recovery Techniques for Waste Materials from IT and Telecommunication Equipment Printed Circuit Boards

“…They have a strong compatibility with the environment, high energy efficiency, and can be used with minimal involvement of auxiliary materials. Using electrochemical methods to leach metals from WPCBs can reduce reagent consumption and recover valuable metals with minimal loss [138]. The use of reagents can be significantly reduced by using direct or controlled electrochemical oxidation for the dissolution of metals.…”

“…It has been deployed in the low-temperature electrochemical recovery of metal from ore [141,142]. This method has shown promising results in terms of having a low impact on the environment [138], low energy consumption, and a high recovery of base metals, thus leaving Au and Pd intact for processing in separate stages. However, more research is needed to improve leaching kinetics, increase the solid to liquid ratio in the leaching treatment, and assess the effect of base metal extractions and precious metal recovery.…”

An advanced study on the hydrometallurgical processing of waste computer printed circuit boards to extract their valuable content of metals

“…capacitors, resistor, batteries), comminuting, in some cases a thermal treatment, chemical leaching, solution purification and metals recovery. Reagents like the inorganic acids (sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid and nitric acid), organic acids (citric acid, oxalic acid) or solution with alkaline character (ammonium and sodium hydroxide) have been used for base metals leaching, afterwards a subsequent leaching on the solid suspension has been applied with chemicals such as cyanide, thiosulfate, thiourea and halides for the precious metals recovery (Birloaga et al, 2013;Jianfeng et al, 2009;Kim et al, 2011;Lee et al, 2011;Oishi et al, 2007;Kamberović et al, 2011;Zhou and Qiu, 2010;Zhu et al, 2011;Fogarasi et al, 2013;Fogarasi et al, 2014;Yang et al, 2011a,b). Many hydrometallurgical attempts were tried to extract copper from the composition of WPCBs, this ''red gold'' being considerate the major metallic element in the composition of these wastes.…”

Waste Printed Circuit Boards recycling: an extensive assessment of current status

“…In the first stage, Cu was leached selectively with about 5% Au extraction followed by a second stage leaching of the first stage leach residue, resulting in 93% Au extraction.RecentlyFogarasi et al (2013) made a comparative environmental assessment on the Curecovery from waste PCBs by two different electro-chemical routes. Both the electrochemicalM A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTprocesses involve the dissolution of copper from waste PCBs with its simultaneous cathodic electrodeposition from the resulting leach liquor.…”