RECOVERY OF COPPER AND SILVER OF PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARDS FROM OBSOLETE COMPUTERS BY ONE-STEP ACID LEACHING
Lidiane Maria de Andrade, Mariana Alves de Carvalho, Marcos Paulo Kohler Caldas, Denise Crocce Romano Espinosa, Jorge Alberto Soares Tenório
Abstract
Over the years, the generation of Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment has been significantly increased, which leads to environmental and economic concerns. Thus, it is fundamental to develop treatment methods for these residues. Printed Circuit Boards are essential components of electronic equipments. In this sense, printed circuit boards are composed of remarkable metals, in particular, copper and silver at high and low concentrations, respectively. These metals can be recovered by the hydrometallurgical process followed by a chemical purification step. Therefore, the aim of this study was to leach silver and copper from two different printed circuit boards (memory board and motherboard) from obsolete computers by hydrometallurgical route based on only one-stage leaching in oxidant media. When compared to the motherboard, a higher recovery rate of Ag was obtained from memory boards 83% and 33%, respectively. Whereas, similar recovery rates of copper were observed for memory board and motherboard, 48% and 46%, respectively.