↓ Skip to main content

New technology for recovering residual metals from nonmetallic fractions of waste printed circuit boards

Overview of attention for article published in Waste Management, March 2017
Altmetric Badge

Citations

dimensions_citation
37 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
58 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
New technology for recovering residual metals from nonmetallic fractions of waste printed circuit boards
Published in
Waste Management, March 2017
DOI 10.1016/j.wasman.2017.03.030
Pubmed ID
Authors

Guangwen Zhang, Yaqun He, Haifeng Wang, Tao Zhang, Shuai Wang, Xing Yang, Wencheng Xia

Abstract

Recycling of waste printed circuit boards is important for environmental protection and sustainable resource utilization. Corona electrostatic separation has been widely used to recycle metals from waste printed circuit boards, but it has poor separation efficiency for finer sized fractions. In this study, a new process of vibrated gas-solid fluidized bed was used to recycle residual metals from nonmetallic fractions, which were treated using the corona electrostatic separation technology. The effects of three main parameters, i.e., vibration frequency, superficial air flow velocity, and fluidizing time on gravity segregation, were investigated using a vibrating gas-solid fluidized bed. Each size fraction had its own optimum parameters. Corresponding to their optimal segregation performance, the products from each experiment were analyzed using an X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and a scanning electron microscope (SEM) equipped with an energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS). From the results, it can be seen that the metal recoveries of -1+0.5mm, -0.5+0.25mm, and -0.25mm size fractions were 86.39%, 82.22% and 76.63%, respectively. After separation, each metal content in the -1+0.5 or -0.5+0.25mm size fraction reduced to 1% or less, while the Fe and Cu contents are up to 2.57% and 1.50%, respectively, in the -0.25mm size fraction. Images of the nonmetallic fractions with a size of -0.25mm indicated that a considerable amount of clavate glass fibers existed in these nonmetallic fractions, which may explain why fine particles had the poorest segregation performance.

Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 58 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 58 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 16 28%
Researcher 7 12%
Student > Master 7 12%
Student > Bachelor 3 5%
Student > Doctoral Student 3 5%
Other 5 9%
Unknown 17 29%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Engineering 12 21%
Chemical Engineering 5 9%
Environmental Science 5 9%
Chemistry 4 7%
Materials Science 2 3%
Other 5 9%
Unknown 25 43%