Recycling:Reduce , Reuse and Recycle

The printed circuit boards (PCBs) are the platform upon which microelectronic components such as, semiconductor chips and capacitors are mounted. Even though its usage and end-of-life cannot be stopped but could be recycled or reused.

The abrupt and non-stop growth in the field of technology, are the reasons for the huge dumping of these e-wastes. For the last few decades, the research on recycling of PCBs had been at hike due to its hazardous compositions. The researchers tried to recycle this e-waste PCBs in different methods like chemical methods, thermal or pyrolysis methods, mechanical methods, etc. In the above methods, the thermal and chemical methods produce a large number of hazardous waste products during the separation process. In mechanical methods the separation and securing the purity of the metals used in the printed circuit board is difficult. The recycling of hazardous e-waste printed circuit board (PCB) in the green route is discussed. The most two critical problems of removing solder and also the thermoset organic materials are solved in this research work in greener route. Electron beam (EB)/Gamma radiation plays a pivotal role to degrade the thermoset to different extents and ease the removal of copper foil, glass fiber and recover & reuse of thermoset resin from the circuit board. The degraded materials were characterized by FTIR, DSC, TGA & rheometer.