Physical separation route for printed circuit boards

Recently, the consumption of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) has increased with the advanced technology. A wide range of components made of metals, plastics and other substances are contained in EEE. Electronic waste (e-waste) is easily demounted and separated by manually methods; however, printed circuit board (PCB) which is one the most common components of e-waste need to be recycled with economic and environmental technologies. In this paper, employing physical separation methods to ground waste PCB, an eco-friendly, simple and environmental process for separation of valuable metals was designed and proposed. A heavy fraction with 40.8% Cu, 350 ppm Au and 475 ppm Ag content at recovery of 95.4% Cu, 77.7% Au and 65.1% Ag was obtained from a feed assaying 12% Cu, 130 ppm Au and 200 ppm Ag using shaking table separator. Cu grade was increased from 52.4% to 73.9% with the recovery over 92% by dry magnetic separator and copper alloys were separated from the waste matrix with 98% Cu recovery using electrostatic separator.