Mengjun Chen
Southwest University of Science and Technology, Sichuan
Title: Nano-Copper Recycled from Waste Printed Circuit Boards by Electrolysis
Biography
Biography: Mengjun Chen
Abstract
Waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE), also called as electronic waste or e-waste, now is proliferating because of technologic innovation. Printed circuit board, as en essential part of almost all electric and electronic equipment, also is obsoleting sharply as the waste stream of e-waste. Waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs) is attracting more and more attention from the government and researchers because it is hazardous but resource rich. Thus, we should recycle the valuable metals from the the angle of pollution controle. Here, we propose a novel technology, slurry electrolysis, to seperate metals and non-metals first and then to recovery nano-copper using the seperated metals as the raw materials. By this technology, for the first step, metals could be successfully seperated from non-metals as micro-metal-powder with a metal recovery rate up to 98%. Then, the obtained micro-metal-powder, maily copper about 86.6%, were slurry electrolyzed for preparing nano-copper. Experiments showed that the abtained nano-copper was smaller than 80 nm with a purity of about 98% and a yield coefficient of about 98%. This technology provide a new approach to completely seperate metals and non-metals from WPCBs and also a high added value product, nano-copper. Of course, envrionmental issues in this process should be considered for field experiment.
