The accumulating generation of E-Waste is gaining more concern. This work reported an environmental-friendly approach, slurry electrolysis (SE), to highly effectively recover metals embedded in Waste Printed Circuit Board (WPCB). The reusable ethylene glycol (EG) is employed as the electrolyte, simple and cheap graphite rod, and copper strip function as anode and cathode, respectively. And it could operate at room temperature and pressure. EG can withstand for hours or days of electrolysis with no sign of degradation but evaporation. It has shown a good selectivity in the leaching solution with metal ions. The metals with high activity could be electrochemically oxidized but not reduced. The metals with low activity could undergo both. From the current results, the system has demonstrated a moderate faraday efficiency of the cathode of 67.7%, successfully recovered 95-97% copper from the real WPCB powder with 61% copper, 24% Al, 10% Zn, 3% Sn and some trace metals. Notably, the extracted metals are all in powder form and easily extractable, indicating that it requires only some facile treatments to make the powder eligible for replacement from mining. This study proved another novel approach to recovering metals from E-Waste on an industrial scale.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Le et al. (2024) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: