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A review on metal extraction from waste printed circuit boards (wPCBs)

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Abstract

Electrical and electronic components, the silent orchestrators of our technological symphony, have been crucial for enabling societal advances. From the simple beginnings of vacuum tubes to the complex circuitry in today’s smartphones, the role and type of electronic components have continued to evolve. The components of electrical and electronic equipment once it has reached the end of its useful life as a product are called electronic waste (e-waste). The exponential growth of electronic devices has made e-waste management an important environmental issue. Improper disposal of e-waste to landfills has serious environmental consequences for the global ecosystem. The majority of discarded e-waste such as computers, mobile phones, televisions, printers, and so on, are embedded with printed circuit boards (PCBs), which are an essential and basic component. PCBs of e-waste contain many different metals including precious metals (Ag, Au, Pd, Pt, etc.), critical elements (Li, Ni, Ga, graphite, rare earth elements, etc.) and non-critical metals (Al and Fe) in varying percentages depending on the electronics. In the emerging era of circular economy recycling, waste printed circuit boards (wPCBs) of any e-waste are seen as an alternative to processing mining ores to meet future metals demand. Different recycling methods such as mechanical separation, pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, biohydrometallurgy, pyrolysis, electrolysis and supercritical fluid technologies have been explored to extract the valuable metals from e-waste. This article aims to provide a critical review of the different recycling routes for e-waste, with a focus on the emerging supercritical fluid technologies (SFT), and their opportunities and challenges. This review will compare the emerging SFTs for existing processes used in industry and other alternative treatment methods. The specific areas of comparison include technical complexity and environmental impacts.

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No data were used for the research described in the article.

Abbreviations

ABS:

Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene

CHPcBFR:

Computer housing plastic containing brominated flame retardant

CPU:

Computer processing units

Cu:

Copper

DMC:

Dough molding compound

E-Waste:

Electrical and electronic waste

HIPS:

High impact polystyrene

LCA:

Life cycle analysis

MMT:

Million metric tons (1,000,000 MT)

MT:

Metric tons (1000 kg)

NR:

Not reported

PA:

Polyamide

PBT:

Polybutylene terephthalate

PC:

Polycarbonate

PC:

Personal computers

PCBs:

Printed circuit boards

PDEs:

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers

PE:

Polyethylene

PGM:

Platinum group metals

PMMA:

Poly(methyl methacrylate)

PS:

Polystyrene

PP:

Polypropylene

PVC:

Polyvinyl chloride

REM:

Rare earth metals

ScCO2 :

Supercritical CO2

ScM:

Supercritical methanol

SCW:

Supercritical water

SMC:

Sheet molding compound

TBBPA:

Tetrabromobisphenol-A

wPCBs:

Waste printed circuit boards

wRAM:

Waste random access memory

wLCD:

Waste liquid crystal display

wTC:

Waste tantalum capacitor

wIC:

Waste integrated circuit

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by Mitacs Inc. Canada and Everything Recycling Inc., Toronto, ON, Canada. We would like to extend our acknowledgement to Christopher Kelly, Graphic Designer, University Student’s Council, Western University, London, ON, Canada, for making graphical abstract for this review.

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  1. Everything Recycling Inc., Toronto, ON, Canada

    James Fazari

  2. Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Western University, London, ON, N6A 5B9, Canada

    James Fazari, Md Zakir Hossain & Paul Charpentier

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering and Polymer Science, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, 3114, Bangladesh

    Md Zakir Hossain

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James Fazari contributed to data curation, conceptualization, project administration, funding acquisition and writing—original draft. Md Zakir Hossain contributed to data curation, conceptualization, funding acquisition and writing—original draft. Paul Charpentier contributed to conceptualization, project administration, funding acquisition, supervision and writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to James Fazari, Md Zakir Hossain or Paul Charpentier.

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Fazari, J., Hossain, M.Z. & Charpentier, P. A review on metal extraction from waste printed circuit boards (wPCBs). J Mater Sci 59, 12257–12284 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-024-09941-6

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