Alkaline leaching of printed circuit board sludge

The purpose of this study was to develop a treatment procedure for processing aluminum‐contaminated sludge produced from the coagulation/flocculation process of wastewater treatment in the manufacture of printed circuit boards (PCBs). In this study, the reagent sodium hydroxide (2 N) was used to leach the heavy metal sludge and the dissolution of sludge's aluminum content was roughly 70%. The weight loss of the heavy metal sludge was caused by the dissolution of aluminum content of nearly 20%. Although dissolution of a small amount of copper occurred simultaneously during this leaching process, the dissolution of copper content was restricted within 0.72% in the leaching operation and the copper content was concentrated in the residue to increase the copper level. The large amounts of sodium hydroxide and Al3+ remaining in the leachate were recycled as neutralization and coagulation agents in wastewater treatment. Synthetic heavy metal wastewater was neutralized with the preceding leachate to estimate the reuse feasibility of recovered coagulant. The heavy metal concentration of the effluent met regulation standards after neutralization and precipitation. The settling rate could be significantly enhanced by the addition of 100 ppm supplemental polyacrylamide (PAM).