Abstract
The leach solutions of waste printed circuit boards contain a variety of base as well as precious metals with different concentrations. So, it is necessary to recover such metals for downstream processing of leach solutions. Cementation process is widely used at the industrial scale due to lower operational cost. In the present study, recovery of copper was performed by scrap iron and aluminium as cementing agents. Use of scrap iron resulted in a 99% copper recovery. Effects of different process parameters were studied to achieve maximum copper recovery. Kinetic study of copper cementation showed that the rate-controlling step was diffusion and the activation energy was 38.83 kJ/mol. Using flask data, the scale-up study was carried out with scrap iron for 8 L of the pregnant bio-leach solution. Complete recovery of copper was achieved within 120 min of reaction time in the scale-up study. The purity of recovered copper was 93% after the recovery process. Scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM- EDX) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) analysis of recovered copper was performed to characterize the recovered metal.
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