Abstract
Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is
currently one of the fastest growing waste streams in the
world. Typical for WEEE is the high content of valuable
and precious metals, as well as harmful contaminants like
halogens, flame retardant chemicals and plastics.
Currently, WEEE treatment and metal recovery methods are
imperfect, polluting and energy intensive. In this paper,
novel treatment possibilities are outlined for printed
circuit boards (PCB) utilizing both the flotation
separation technique and acid bioleaching. Flotation,
conducted after crushing and sieving of PCB, produced two
fractions: metal-rich concentrate, which is more suitable
for pyrometallurgical treatment than untreated PCB, and
metal-poor froth suitable for acid bioleaching. It was
seen that especially low pH (1.6), high initial Fe2+
concentration (7.8 g/l) and low PCB froth concentration
in the bioleaching solution (50 g/l) were beneficial for
the rapid and selective dissolution of copper. With these
parameters, 99% of copper was solubilized from PCB froth
in bioreactor treatment, with Cu (6.8 g/l) and Fe (7.0
g/l) being the only major metallic elements in
bioleaching solution.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 26-31 |
| Journal | Minerals Engineering |
| Volume | 75 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2015 |
| MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Keywords
- bioleaching
- froth flotation
- waste processing
