Potential hydrometallurgical processes to recycle metals from discarded personal computer

Abstract

Rapid technological modernization has accelerated the replacement of older electronic goods with newer ones, which has led to the generation of huge quantities of discarded electronic items at their end-of-life, known as electronic waste (e-waste). The growing quantity of e-waste has become a major threat to the society as well as the environment. On the other hand, e-waste contains several valuable metals and materials of high economic value, which compels researchers to work in the area for secondary resources for metal recovery. Metal recovery from such secondary resources will not only preserve the primary resources but also reduce the loss of valuable metals/materials, protect the environment from their hazardous effects as well as reduce the demand-supply gap of metals up to some extent. In view of the above, the present study is focused on the possible effort to figure out a variety of metals present in the component of waste personal computers (WPCs) as well as different recycling processes implemented for the efficient recovery of metals.