Extraction of copper from small electronic devices populated on discarded PCBs

Metal Extraction and Forming Division, National Metallurgical Laboratory, Jamshedpur-831 007, Jharkhand, India

E-mail : mkjha@nmlindia.org Fax : 91-657-2345213

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur-831 014, Jharkhand, India

With the technological development, the demand for electric and electronic equipment (EEE) is increasing rapidly worldwide. Printed circuit boards (PCBs) is one of the essential parts of all the EEEs which contains large number of small components for different applications. Huge amount of such small components are generated during PCBs pro­duction as well as after its end of life. Recycling and reuse of these de­vices from waste circuit boards is essential to conserve the resources and avoid environmental problem. Present study shows the recovery of valu­able copper from small electronic devices such as capacitor, LED, MOSFET etc. populated on discarded PCBs. The crushed samples were leached using nitric acid 99% copper dissolution was observed at elevated temperature, pulp density of 15 g/L in 60 min with stirring speed of 300 rpm. The metals or its salt can be further produced from the leach li­quor by the process of precipitation, evaporation, solvent extraction etc.