Abstract
Recovering noble metals from Waste Electrical Electronic Equipment (WEEE) will provide an additional income within the disposal process of end-of-life electronic devices. Generally, the recycling process starts with the manual disman-tling of different devices and with sorting of the subdivided products into useful and hazardous materials. A sample of about 21 tonnes of WEEE was dismantled in 14 days to remove Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) that were about 5% weight of the whole sample. Computer PCBs proved to contain the 96% of all the gold present in all types of PCBs of the sample. Computer PCBs were manually dismantled to obtain the easy-to-remove components of the board, namely, the integrated circuits and the processors, which were about 13% weight of the board and 0.1% weight of the whole WEEE sample and contained about 91% of the gold present in the whole board with an average concentration of 2400 μg/g
Highlights
The amount of electronic scrap is increasing all over the world and each European inhabitant produces about 20 kg each year
The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE Directive, 2002/96/EC), issued by the European Commission aims to minimise the impact of end-oflife electrical and electronic goods on the environment, by increasing re-use and recycling and reducing the amount of Waste Electrical Electronic Equipment (WEEE) used for landfill
The aim of the present work is to identify the valuable components in the Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) and to separate them from the board to minimize environmental impact, through a strong reduction in the volume of material to be processed for precious metal recovery in the successive steps
Summary
The amount of electronic scrap is increasing all over the world and each European inhabitant produces about 20 kg each year. The final destination of such waste should be a landfill with a high level of environmental protection, due to the content of hazardous compounds. According to the European Commission, the waste stream of electronic and electrical equipment has been identified as one of the fastest growing waste streams in the EU, at present being less in quantity than. The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE Directive, 2002/96/EC), issued by the European Commission aims to minimise the impact of end-oflife electrical and electronic goods on the environment, by increasing re-use and recycling and reducing the amount of WEEE used for landfill. A decision of the Commission stated that, within December 2006, 4 kg WEEE/inhabitant should have been collected yearly
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