Feasibility study of waste printed circuit board recycling through manual dismantling and hydrometallurgical process

In the last years, there is an increasing acknowledgment of our impact on the environment due to our lifestyle, while the need to adopt a more sustainable approach as to our consumption habits emerges as of particular significance. This trend regards industrial sectors affecting the consumption habits and, especially, electronic industry where the short life cycles and the rapidly developing technology have led to increased e-waste volumes, such as discarded electronic equipment. The majority of such elements result in landfills. In this paper the method of hydrometallurgy is adopted to recycle metals from waste printed circuit board (PCB). An experimental leaching test was built up to recover precious and hazardous metals from the PCB. Experimental results showed that HCi can be used as metals-formation material to separate metal from PCB during the leaching process. Those results helped to find a way to recover metals and precious metals from PCB.