E-waste recycling to recover base and precious metals

Ignatio Madanhire, Liberty Nyahunda, Simon Chinguwa, Charles Mbohwa

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

Abstract

This research study reviews the treatment and recyclability of e-waste such as PCBs, e-plastics and CRTs. Land filling and incineration were found to be not good management methods as they do not deal with the toxic gases found in e-waste. Hydrometallurgy processing methods was developed and used in the extraction of base and precious metals. Since precious metal leaching is affected by copper content, to maximize precious metal leaching, a 2 step base metal leaching stage was employed. The first step mainly focused on the removal of Pb and Fe and the second step was to extract copper, zinc and nickel. First stage used nitric acid and the second stage used sulphuric acid and hydrogen peroxide. Lead recovery was almost 90% and copper recovery amounted to almost 95%. Precious metal leaching utilized ammonium thio-sulphate as the lixiviant and gold recovery was low, but silver recovery was significantly high.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)185-192
Number of pages8
JournalProceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management
Volume2019
Issue numberMAR
Publication statusPublished - 2019
Event9th International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management, IEOM 2019 - Bangkok, Thailand
Duration: 5 Mar 20197 Mar 2019

Keywords

  • Base
  • E-waste
  • Metals
  • PCBs
  • Precious
  • Recycling
  • Recycling

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Strategy and Management
  • Management Science and Operations Research
  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

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