Business opportunities to reclaim metals by urban mining

Abstract

In the modern world, changing requirements of advanced and latest features of electronic devices in each sector have created the generations of huge amounts of e-waste. On the other side, the depletion of limited metal reserves, illegal recycling, and business opportunities by organized sectors compelled the researchers to develop environmental and feasible processes for the recycling of these e-wastes to reclaim different non-ferrous (Cu, Ni, Al, Pb, and Sn), precious (Au, Ag, Pt and Pd), rare (Li, Co, In) and rare earth metals (Nd, Ce, La, Y and Eu). Since, the last 15 years CSIR-NML, Jamshedpur, India has been actively involved in the development of the process Know-how to recycle waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEEs) to recover metals and materials. At first, the WEEEs were classified, dismantled, and pre-treated to isolate plastics, ceramics, rubber, epoxy, iron casing, and metallic fractions. Further, the metallic concentrate was treated using hydrometallurgical technique i.e. dissolution of metals by aqueous processing, solvent extraction, adsorption, and electro-winning for maximum recovery of metallic values. Various flow sheets developed for the recycling of WEEEs are discussed for the processing and extraction of metallic values, which strictly complies with environmental rules and regulations.