Pressure leaching of metals from waste Printed Circuit Boards using sulphuric acid

Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are essential components of electronic equipments which contain various metallic values. This paper reports a hydrometallurgical recycling process for waste PCBs, which consists of the novel pretreatment consisting of organic swelling of PCBs followed by sulfuric acid leaching of metals from waste PCBs. To recycle the waste PCBs, experiments were carried out for the recovery of copper from the crushed and organic swelled materials of waste PCBs using sulfuric acid leaching in presence of hydrogen peroxide under atmospheric and pressure condition. The leaching of PCBs at 90°C, pulp density 100 g/L under atmospheric condition, using 6M sulfuric acid resulted in the dissolution of a minor amount of copper due to the presence of plastic coating on the surface of metallic layers. On the other hand, when the liberated metal sheets from organic swelled PCBs were treated with dilute sulfuric acid of concentration 2M along with hydrogen peroxide in an autoclave under oxygen atmosphere, the percentage recovery of copper was found to increase from 59.63% to 97.01% with an increase in hydrogen peroxide concentration from 5 to 15% (v/v) keeping constant pulp density 30 g/L