Indium recovery from spent liquid crystal displays by using hydrometallurgical methods and microwave pyrolysis

Indium recovery from spent liquid crystal displays (LCDs) of monitors was studied by using microwave pyrolysis as a pretreatment step prior to hydrometallurgical processes including acid leaching, solvent extraction, and stripping. After microwave pyrolysis at 150 W for a processing time of 50 min, the hydrometallurgical processes were carried out to sequentially solubilize and increase the purity of indium ions in the product solution. The leaching efficiency of indium was approximately 98% when using 0.5 M of sulfuric acid at a solid-to-liquid ratio (S/L) of 0.1 g/mL. Afterwards, the indium ions in the leachate were extracted by using 20% di(2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid (D2EHPA) in kerosene. The purity of indium ions in the organic phase was approximately 87% at an oil-to-aqueous ratio (O/A) of 1/10. Finally, the indium ions in the extract were stripped by using 6 M of hydrochloric acid at an O/A ratio of 10/1. The purity of indium ions in the aqueous phase was as high as 99.98%. The final recovery rate of indium from spent LCDs was approximately 75%, substantially higher than those that were obtained by using shredding or grinding pretreatment. The maximum processing capacity of microwave pyrolysis of spent LCDs could be approximately 500 g, which means that it would only need 0.5 kWh of electricity for the microwave pyrolysis of 1 kg of spent LCDs. According to the experimental results and advantages, it can be concluded that microwave pyrolysis is an effective technique for the pretreatment of spent LCDs.