Recovery of waste printed circuit boards through pyrometallurgical processing: A review

In recent years, due to the large amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment. Researchers need to search for a method to solve the harmless disposal of waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs) as soon as possible. Considering that WPCBs contain metals and polymeric materials, they have been considered to be an important urban mineral resource. The recycling of WPCBs has been widely studied. Published research shows that pyrometallurgical processing is an economic and effective method to achieve WPCBs harmless recycling and resource utilization. This paper summarizes and analyzes the research results of pyrometallurgical processing for the recycling of WPCBs in recent years, and recovery processes such as incineration, pyrolysis, plasma and molten salt are discussed. Some proposals against the existing problems during pyrometallurgical processing process were presented. We hope that this paper can provide some certain assistances to policy makers, other researchers and the practitioners in the WPCB recycling enterprise.