Research Progress on Recovering Valuable Metals from Wasted Circuit Board by Bio-Hydrometallurgy Technology

Abstract

The quantity of circuit boards produced and abandoned has increased with the development of electronics industry. The wasted circuit board has the characters of large amounts, high metal content and harmful to environment, which is known as “urban mines”. The effective recycling of the valuable metals in wasted circuit boards had always been the focus. The characteristics of pyrometallurgical recovery, mechanical recovery and wet recovery, such as low recovery ratio, high cost and environmental pollution fails to recover the precious metals from wasted circuit board. This paper outlines the research progress of using the microbiological method to recycle the metal from waste circuit boards, including the type of main used microbe, reaction mechanism and influencing factors and so on. Additional, this paper discusses the research status about taking advantage of the microbiological method to recycle the metals with high economic value. Finally, it discusses the research direction and prospect of this recycling method.