Business opportunities to reclaim metals by urban mining

Abstract

In the modern world, changing requirement of advanced and latest features electronic devices in each sectors have created the generations of huge amount of e-wastes. On the other side, depletion of limited metal reserves, illegal recycling and business opportunity 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, last 15 years CSIR-NML, Jamshedpur, India has been actively involved for the development of process Know-how to recycle waste electrical and electronic equipments (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, 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.