Direct electrolytic refining of end-of-life industrial copper waste scraps for production of high purity copper powder

Abstract

The end-of-life electric cables from both domestic and industrial sources offer an attractive resource of copper metal. In addition, copper wastes generated during fabrication of copper components remains another valuable source of recyclable copper. This work reports a simple, cost-effective and eco-friendly direct electrolytic refining using waste electrical copper wire scrap and copper plate rejects for producing the value added high purity copper powder. Suitable anode support system was applied in which compressed wire scrap or copper plate rejects were held to make anode for electrolytic cell. Electrolysis parameters like current density, acid concentration and copper ion concentration were varied to arrive at optimum condition. Results showed the energy consumption of 1.44 kW h/kg at 89% current efficiency for producing the copper powder, that consisted of >80% of–325 mesh size particles, from waste copper wire anodes. However, slightly lower energy consumption of 1.32 kW h/kg at 91% current efficiency was observed during production of copper powder from copper fabrication rejects. The copper powder thus produced was characterised by chemical analysis, XRD and optical microscope to examine the purity and morphology etc. and found suitable for powder metallurgical applications. Present investigations have established the potential utilisation of copper waste wire scrap and copper plate rejects for the production of value added high purity copper powder.