Recovery of Noble Metals from Electronic  Waste by Pyrometallurgy Process

Arensen Aier; Dr. D. Prabhakaran; Dr. T. Kannadasan

Volume : II, Issue : XII, December - 2013

Recovery of Noble Metals from Electronic Waste by Pyrometallurgy Process

Arensen Aier, Dr. D. Prabhakaran, Dr. T. Kannadasan

Abstract :

Growth of electronic waste has become one of the fastest and polluting agents of the environment. In a general scheme it pollutes the environment due to one main cause that is increase in population, and also due to advancement in technology and life style of the people. Recycling of various electronic wastes has been done by various process like hydrometallurgy, biometallurgy and pyrometallurgy process. In this research process recovery of precious noble metals like tin, nickel, lead, silver, copper, aluminum etc. from electronic waste has been extracted by using pyrometallurgy process i.e by smelting. In this the waste electronic PCB (Printed circuit boards) were first crushed and passed through various unit operation to separate the metal and non-metal parts. And further crushing to ing the size of around 4-5mm. Then the metals were introduced in a furnace with a range temperature of 1100-1400 0C inside an alumina crucible. The heating operation is done for around an hour and molten alloy metals are extracted. The recovered metals contend can be examined and studied by using AAS (atomic absorption spectroscopy). In this way we can recover precious metal from waste PCB.