Material Recovery and Characterization of PCB from Electronic Waste

Printed Circuit Boards are commonly exist in computers, laptops and mobile phones. Since it contains of a variety of metals and semiconductors, it is difficult to recover the materials in PCB. This paper aims to characterize the composition of these materials and a method to properly recycle and recover the materials in them. This paper utilized simple mechanical and chemical procedures to recover PCBs. Collected PCBs were disassembled, pulverized and separated by using density and magnetic separation method. By using the chemical recycling method, 98.82% purity of CuSO4 hydrate and Al2(SO4)3 hydrate were recovered from the PCBs. It is found that the milling methods, size of the sample and the density of the separating solution determine the effectiveness of the materials recovered.