Cleaner production application as a sustainable production strategy, in a Turkish Printed Circuit Board Plant

During the last several decades, the amount of waste from electronic and electrical equipment manufacturing has grown substantially and as a result, the environmental concerns about this industry have also been increasing. As one of the main branches of the electronics industry, Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) manufactory consumes large amounts of hazardous chemicals and process rinsing water that creates severe pollution load in process wastewater. Within this context, the cleaner production (CP) application through resource conservation and waste reduction at source has been applied for the selected PCB production plant. The prioritized CP options included (a) plasma desmear as a technology modification that eliminates both water and hazardous chemical consumption, (b) lead free coatings as a raw material substitution/conservation option, (c) ammoniacal etchant recovery, (d) microetchant reuse and (e) drag-out recovery by drain board application as on-site recycle/reuse/recovery options. The technical, environmental and economical evaluation of CP options indicated that recommended CP options are feasible investments for the production processes that lead to not only copper recovery but also minimum etchant chemical, electroplating metal and rinsing water consumption. The results also indicated that the implementation of the recommended CP options provide definite decrease in the end-of-pipe treatment (eop) cost. The feasibility analyses were carried out based on the internal rate of return (IRR) values and payback periods of the selected CP options that were grouped into 5-year middle term (options having 1.5–2 year payback period and 35–82% of IRR value) and 7-year long term (option having a 8 year and above payback period and −13% of IRR value) action plans starting from the year 2007. Two of the proposed CP options, lead free coatings and drag-out recovery by drain board application, have been successfully implemented by the selected PCB plant since the year 2007.