| Abstract
| - The printed circuit board (PCB) contains nearly 28%metals that are abundant non-ferrous metals such as Cu,Al, Sn, etc. The purity of precious metals in PCBs ismore than 10 times higher than that of rich-content minerals.Therefore, recycling of PCBs is an important subject notonly from the treatment of waste but also from the recoveryof valuable materials. Chemical and mechanical methodsare two traditional recycling processes for waste PCBs.However, the prospect of chemical methods will be limitedsince the emission of toxic liquid or gas brings secondarypollution to the environment during the process. Mechanicalprocesses, such as shape separation, jigging, density-basedseparation, and electrostatic separation have beenwidely utilized in the recycling industry. But, recycling ofwaste PCBs is only beginning. In this study, a total of 400 kgof waste PCBs was processed by a recycle technologywithout negative impact to the environment. The technologycontained mechanical two-step crushing, corona electrostatic separating, and recovery. The results indicatedthat (i) two-step crushing was an effect process to stripmetals from base plates completely; (ii) the size of particlesbetween 0.6 and 1.2 mm was suitable for coronaelectrostatic separating during industrial application; and(iii) the nonmetal of waste PCBs attained 80% weight of akind of nonmetallic plate that expanded the applyingprospect of waste nonmetallic materials.
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