Life cycle analysis on sequential recovery of copper and gold from waste printed circuit boards.

Informal recycling activities of waste printed circuit boards, such as pyrolysis and landfilling, cause severe environmental harm to society. Pyrolysis of resin and polymer fraction leads to the generation of toxic effluents, and landfilling causes the leaching of heavy metals into the groundwater. A sustainable and eco-friendly way to recover base and precious elements will be an economically attractive option. Current research studied the cradle-to-gate environmental impacts of the sequential recovery of copper and gold through delamination, leaching, solvent extraction, electrowinning and cementation from waste printed circuit boards with the help of life cycle assessment.GaBi software was utilized to assess environmental impacts such as global warming, abiotic depletion (fossil), acidification potential and human toxicity potential during the process. Inventory data was collected by conducting several experiments and from optimizing parameters for recycling and separating 4.53 g of copper and 2.25 mg of gold from 16 g of component-free waste printed circuit boards. Results indicate that the chemical pre-treatment or delamination process for separating metal clads from the non-metallic fraction is primarily involved in the impact category. The higher impact during delamination is due to electricity consumption. The proposed study also corroborates the industrial viability of recycling valuable metals from waste printed circuit boards to minimize the environmental impacts. The outcomes of this work could be beneficial in creating the environmental guiding principle for WPCBs recycling plants.

Waste remediation: Low-temperature synthesis of hybrid Cu(OH)2/CuO and CuO nanostructures from spent printed circuit boards and their dye degradation studies.

The demand for environmentally friendly and sustainable resource utilization techniques for recycling waste printed circuit boards is significant due to their status as valuable secondary resources, containing high-purity copper and precious metals. In this context, Cu(OH)2/CuO and CuO nanostructures were fabricated using alkaline precipitation and low-temperature aging methods using the strip solution originated from laboratory-scale spent mobile phone printed circuit board recovery process. XRD, FTIR, FESEM-EDX, and TEM were utilized to characterize the as-recovered nanoproducts. A hybrid structure of Cu(OH)2/CuO was formed at 70°, and monoclinic CuO phase was formed at 80 °C aging time. The results show that Cu(OH)2/CuO nanoflakes have an average crystallite size of 24.06 nm and a particle width of 22 ± 3 nm. Cu(OH)2/CuO nanoflakes formed at 70 °C aging temperature and 24-h residence time have finer crystallite and particle sizes than CuO-ridged nanospheres formed at 80 °C aging temperature. The optical band gap energy of Cu(OH)2/CuO and CuO nanostructures formed was found to be 2.28 eV and 2.22 eV, respectively. The hybrid Cu(OH)2/CuO nanostructure photocatalyzed the decomposed 97.28% rhodamine blue using a visible light source, whereas the CuO nanostructure degraded only 14.64% rhodamine blue dye under similar conditions. A surfactant-less hybrid structure is developed without the use of any chemical precursor. Thus, a high value-added product is produced using one waste material to remove another waste in wastewater treatment.

Challenges and opportunities in the recovery of gold from electronic waste.

Rapid global technological development has led to the rising production of electronic waste that presents both challenges and opportunities in its recycling. In this review, we highlight the value of metal resources in the printed circuit boards (PCBs) commonly found in end-of-life electronics, the differences between primary (ore) mining applications and secondary ('urban') mining, and the variety of metallurgical separations, in particular those that have the potential to selectively and sustainably recover gold from waste PCBs.