Printed circuit board recycling: A patent review

This work presents a review of the international patents dealing with printed circuit board (PCB) recycling. PCBs are present in the majority of electric and electronic devices, and when the appliances reach their end-of-life phase, they need to be properly handled for the presence of valuable and hazardous materials. Many technologies have been developed and reviewed by the scientific community. However, the literature still lacks of a review of international patents, important to understand the technological innovation in this field. For this purpose, the current status of the international patents dealing with PCB recycling since the 1990s is presented. The main technologies for the mechanical treatment, the metal recovery and purification, the non-metal fraction exploitation are described and reviewed. As a whole, the present analysis is fundamental for the effective boost of a circular economy approaches. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.