Use of gravity separation in metals concentration from printed circuit board scraps

• Autor(a) principal: Veit,Hugo Marcelo
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Outros Autores: Juchneski,Nichele Cristina de Freitas, Scherer,Janine
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: REM. Revista Escola de Minas (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0370-44672014000100011
• topic: Electronic scrap; metals; gravity separation; printed circuit boards scrap

The amount of solid waste generated by all segments of society has increased in past decades. Annually, in Brazil, 96,000 tonnes of electronic scrap are generated from computers. The incorrect disposal of this waste creates environmental damage, generating loss of materials that could be reused and / or recycled, reducing the extraction of recyclable materials to produce new materials. The printed circuit boards (PCB) represent approximately 30% of the electronic waste generated and its recycling is a complex process, but very important for the recovery of metals of high economic value. Industrial processes for the recovery of metals from PCB are based on pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy. In both cases, it is possible to carry out a pretreatment that involves the use of mechanical processes. Therefore, for this paper, the concentration of the metallic fraction of PCB through the use of a Mozley concentrator was enabled. The results show that it is possible to obtain significant quantities of metals such as copper (concentration 85%), tin (95%), and silver (98%) in the fractions of interest.