Problems, prospects and current trends of copper recycling in India: An overview

Implementation of the strict environmental rules, emphasis on the development of zero waste technologies and depletion of metal rich primary ores are the main driving forces for the scientific community to develop new processes for the reuse/recycle the industrial wastes and byproducts to recover metal values and other value added products. This review focuses on the status of copper in India. Since the cost of Cu production from primary sources is very high due to the involvement of a number of tedious steps, recovery from secondary sources such as various types of solid wastes, scraps and copper electrorefining bleed streams, byproducts from other processes containing appreciable amount of Cu, Ni, Co is gaining importance day by day. Besides the reduced cost of production of copper by secondary processing other advantages are: energy saving, conservation of natural resources and saving the environmental degradation. This paper highlights various aspects of copper industries in India, viz. present and future scenario of copper production, demand and supply, sources of waste generation and their treatment/disposal methods, status on recycling of copper, etc. A brief discussion on the attempts made at National Metallurgical Laboratory, Jamshedpur, to develop several ecofriendly processes for the recovery of copper from various solid and liquid wastes is also described.