Hydrometallurgical approach to investigate the recovery potential of gold available in waste PCBS

Abstract

Gold is one of the highly demanded precious metals which have applications in jewellery, investment, electronic and medical industries due to its unique chemical and physical characteristics. Although the demand for gold is continuously increasing, gold producers have failed to meet the existing demand for gold through gold mining. Therefore, seeking out secondary sources of gold is vital. Since gold is one of the major metals used in the electronic industry, e-waste has enormous potential as a secondary source of gold. This study outlines the recovery potential of gold and several other valuable metals quantitatively in Printed Circuit Board (PCB) components of end-of-life computers, namely, microprocessors and Integrated Circuits (ICs), plated connectors in network cards, and plated metallic pins. The research workflow consists of a sample pre-processing and an acid leaching (digestion) process followed by a sample analysis process using an Inductively Coupled Plasma - Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS). According to the results, the recovery potential of gold is significant in every e-waste component tested under this study.