A New Technology for Recovery of Metals from Waste Printed Circuit Boards

Recycling of metallic fractions from waste printed circuit boards (PCBs) using gravity separation and hydrometallurgy was investigated. The obtained research fruits were listed as follows: (1) When being pulverized to finer than 0.4mm, waste PCBs could be generally dissociated from plastics. (2) Shaking table was shown to be suitable for processing pulverized PCBs. Pulverized PCBs containing 6.97% copper was enriched to 33.55% in a single operation and the copper recovery was 90.3% in the best size range of separation. (3) Pressure oxidation leaching was shown to be effective for separating copper from aluminum and tin. The leaching extraction of aluminum and tin were 86.6% and 96.3%, copper extraction was 1% or less under the optimal conditions.