scholarly journals Recycling Waste Circuit Board Efficiently and Environmentally Friendly through Small-Molecule Assisted Dissolution

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiqiang Chen ◽  
Meng Yang ◽  
Qian Shi ◽  
Xiao Kuang ◽  
H. Jerry Qi ◽  
...  

AbstractWith the increasing amount of electronic waste (e-waste) generated globally, it is an enormous challenge to recycle printed circuit boards (PCBs) efficiently and environmentally friendly. However, conventional recycling technologies have low efficiency and require tough treatment such as high temperature (>200 °C) and high pressure. In this paper, a small-molecule assisted approach based on dynamic reaction was proposed to dissolve thermosetting polymers containing ester groups and recycle electronic components from PCBs. This effective approach operates below 200 °C and the polymer could be dissolved in a short time. It has a remarkable ability to recycle a wide range of commercial PCBs, including boards made of typical anhydride epoxy or polyester substrate. Besides, it is environmentally friendly as even the recycling solution could be reused multiple times. In addition, the wasted solution after recycling could be used for board bonding and damage repair. This work also demonstrates the advantage of using polymers containing ester groups as the PCB substrate in consideration of eco-friendly and efficient recycling.

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenlong Duan ◽  
Cheng Sheng ◽  
Lingling Wu ◽  
Yuemin Zhao ◽  
Jinfeng He ◽  
...  

Recovering particle materials from discarded printed circuit boards can enhance resource recycling and reduce environmental pollution. Efficiently physically separating and recovering fine metal particles (−0.5 mm) from the circuit boards are a key recycling challenge. To do this, a new type of separator, an inflatable tapered diameter separation bed, was developed to study particle motion and separation mechanisms in the bed’s fluid flow field. For 0.5–0.25 mm circuit board particles, metal recovery rates ranged from 87.56 to 94.17%, and separation efficiencies ranged from 87.71 to 94.20%. For 0.25–0.125 mm particles, metal recovery rates ranged from 84.76 to 91.97%, and separation efficiencies ranged from 84.74 to 91.86%. For superfine products (−0.125 mm), metal recovery rates ranged from 73.11 to 83.04%, and separation efficiencies ranged from 73.00 to 83.14%. This research showed that the inflatable tapered diameter separation bed achieved efficient particle separation and can be used to recover fine particles under a wide range of operational conditions. The bed offers a new mechanical technology to recycle valuable materials from discarded printed circuit boards, reducing environmental pollution.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 213-219
Author(s):  
Dawid Franke ◽  
Tomasz Suponik ◽  
Paweł M. Nuckowski ◽  
Klaudiusz Gołombek ◽  
Kamila Hyra

AbstractWithout the use of appropriate recycling technologies, the growing amount of electronic waste in the world can be a threat to the development of new technologies, and in the case of improper waste management, may have a negative impact on the environment. This is due to the fact that this waste contains large amounts of valuable metals and toxic polymers. Therefore, it should be recycled in accordance with the assumptions of the circular economy. The methods of mechanical recovery of metals from electronic waste, including printed circuits, may be widely used in the future by waste management companies as well as metal production and processing companies. That is why, a well-known and easily applicable electrostatic separation (ES) method was used to recover metals from printed circuit boards. The grain class of 0.32 - 0.10 mm, obtained after grinding the boards, was fed to a separator. Feed and separation products were analyzed by means of ICP-AES, SEM/EDS and XRD. The concentrate yield obtained after electrostatic separation amounted to 32.3% of the feed. Its density was 11.1 g/cc. Out of the 91.44% elements identified in the concentrate, over 90% were metals. XRD, SEM observations and EDS analysis confirmed the presence of non-metallic materials in the concentrate. This relatively high content of impurities indicates the need to grind printed circuit board into grain classes smaller than 0.32-0.10 mm.


2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo Marcelo Veit ◽  
Nichele Cristina de Freitas Juchneski ◽  
Janine Scherer

The amount of solid waste generated by all segments of society has increased in past decades. Annually, in Brazil, 96,000 tonnes of electronic scrap are generated from computers. The incorrect disposal of this waste creates environmental damage, generating loss of materials that could be reused and / or recycled, reducing the extraction of recyclable materials to produce new materials. The printed circuit boards (PCB) represent approximately 30% of the electronic waste generated and its recycling is a complex process, but very important for the recovery of metals of high economic value. Industrial processes for the recovery of metals from PCB are based on pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy. In both cases, it is possible to carry out a pretreatment that involves the use of mechanical processes. Therefore, for this paper, the concentration of the metallic fraction of PCB through the use of a Mozley concentrator was enabled. The results show that it is possible to obtain significant quantities of metals such as copper (concentration 85%), tin (95%), and silver (98%) in the fractions of interest.


Author(s):  
P. Singh ◽  
G.T. Galyon ◽  
J. Obrzut ◽  
W.A. Alpaugh

Abstract A time delayed dielectric breakdown in printed circuit boards, operating at temperatures below the epoxy resin insulation thermo-electrical limits, is reported. The safe temperature-voltage operating regime was estimated and related to the glass-rubber transition (To) of printed circuit board dielectric. The TG was measured using DSC and compared with that determined from electrical conductivity of the laminate in the glassy and rubbery state. A failure model was developed and fitted to the experimental data matching a localized thermal degradation of the dielectric and time dependency. The model is based on localized heating of an insulation resistance defect that under certain voltage bias can exceed the TG, thus, initiating thermal degradation of the resin. The model agrees well with the experimental data and indicates that the failure rate and truncation time beyond which the probability of failure becomes insignificant, decreases with increasing glass-rubber transition temperature.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 895
Author(s):  
Carlotta Alias ◽  
Daniela Bulgari ◽  
Fabjola Bilo ◽  
Laura Borgese ◽  
Alessandra Gianoncelli ◽  
...  

A low-energy paradigm was adopted for sustainable, affordable, and effective urban waste valorization. Here a new, eco-designed, solid-state fermentation process is presented to obtain some useful bio-products by recycling of different wastes. Urban food waste and scraps from trimmings were used as a substrate for the production of citric acid (CA) by solid state fermentation of Aspergillus niger NRRL 334, with a yield of 20.50 mg of CA per gram of substrate. The acid solution was used to extract metals from waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs), one of the most common electronic waste. The leaching activity of the biological solution is comparable to a commercial CA one. Sn and Fe were the most leached metals (404.09 and 67.99 mg/L, respectively), followed by Ni and Zn (4.55 and 1.92 mg/L) without any pre-treatments as usually performed. Commercial CA extracted Fe more efficiently than the organic one (123.46 vs. 67.99 mg/L); vice versa, biological organic CA recovered Ni better than commercial CA (4.55 vs. 1.54 mg/L). This is the first approach that allows the extraction of metals from WPCBs through CA produced by A. niger directly grown on waste material without any sugar supplement. This “green” process could be an alternative for the recovery of valuable metals such as Fe, Pb, and Ni from electronic waste.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 2808
Author(s):  
Leandro H. de S. Silva ◽  
Agostinho A. F. Júnior ◽  
George O. A. Azevedo ◽  
Sergio C. Oliveira ◽  
Bruno J. T. Fernandes

The technological growth of the last decades has brought many improvements in daily life, but also concerns on how to deal with electronic waste. Electrical and electronic equipment waste is the fastest-growing rate in the industrialized world. One of the elements of electronic equipment is the printed circuit board (PCB) and almost every electronic equipment has a PCB inside it. While waste PCB (WPCB) recycling may result in the recovery of potentially precious materials and the reuse of some components, it is a challenging task because its composition diversity requires a cautious pre-processing stage to achieve optimal recycling outcomes. Our research focused on proposing a method to evaluate the economic feasibility of recycling integrated circuits (ICs) from WPCB. The proposed method can help decide whether to dismantle a separate WPCB before the physical or mechanical recycling process and consists of estimating the IC area from a WPCB, calculating the IC’s weight using surface density, and estimating how much metal can be recovered by recycling those ICs. To estimate the IC area in a WPCB, we used a state-of-the-art object detection deep learning model (YOLO) and the PCB DSLR image dataset to detect the WPCB’s ICs. Regarding IC detection, the best result was obtained with the partitioned analysis of each image through a sliding window, thus creating new images of smaller dimensions, reaching 86.77% mAP. As a final result, we estimate that the Deep PCB Dataset has a total of 1079.18 g of ICs, from which it would be possible to recover at least 909.94 g of metals and silicon elements from all WPCBs’ ICs. Since there is a high variability in the compositions of WPCBs, it is possible to calculate the gross income for each WPCB and use it as a decision criterion for the type of pre-processing.


2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-279
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Vucinic ◽  
Zeljko Kamberovic ◽  
Milisav Ranitovic ◽  
Tihomir Kovacevic ◽  
Irena Najcevic

This paper presents the analysis of the quantity of plastic and waste printed circuit boards obtained after the mechanical treatment of electrical and electronic waste (E-waste) in the Republic of Serbia, as well as the recycling of non-metallic fractions of waste printed circuit boards. The aim is to analyze the obtained recycled material and recommendation for possible application of recyclables. The data on the quantities and treatment of plastics and printed circuit boards obtained after the mechanical treatment of WEEE, were gained through questionnaires sent to the operators who treat this type of waste. The results of the questionnaire analysis showed that in 2014 the dismantling of E-waste isolated 1,870.95 t of plastic and 499.85 t of printed circuit boards. In the Republic of Serbia, E-waste recycling is performed exclusively by using mechanical methods. Mechanical methods consist of primary crushing and separation of the materials which have a utility value as secondary raw materials, from the components and materials that have hazardous properties. Respect to that, the recycling of printed circuit boards using some of the metallurgical processes with the aim of extracting copper, precious metals and non-metallic fraction is completely absent, and the circuit boards are exported as a whole. Given the number of printed circuit boards obtained by E-waste dismantling, and the fact that from an economic point of view, hydrometallurgical methods are very suitable technological solutions in the case of a smaller capacity, there is a possibility for establishing the facilities in the Republic of Serbia for the hydrometallurgical treatment that could be used for metals extraction, and non-metallic fractions, which also have their own value. Printed circuit boards granulate obtained after the mechanical pretreatment and the selective removal of metals by hydrometallurgical processes was used for the testing of the recycling potential. Granulometric analysis as well analysis of chemical composition of obtained fractions was performed. Subsequently, the manual classification of different types of polymeric material contained in the granulate was made, and both the apparent specific gravity and the chemical composition of the classified types of polymeric materials were determined. Chemical composition of granulate was determined by X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) using Thermo Scientific Niton XL 3t, while the identification of residual polymers was determined by the FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy) method on the Bomen MB 100 device in range 4000 to 400 cm?1. Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that after the hydrometallurgical treatment of printed circuit boards, and the separation of metals that have the highest value, the residual non-metallic fraction have the utility value and can be used for various purposes, such as developing new polymer materials for technical purposes that have been investigated by many researchers and mentioned in this article.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Fricke ◽  
Mounir Achir ◽  
Philippe Le Bars ◽  
Thomas Kürner

AbstractBased on vector network analyzer Measurements, a model for the specular reflection behavior of printed circuit boards in the Terahertz range has been derived. It has been calibrated to suit the behavior of the measurements using a simulated annealing algorithm. The model has been tailored for integration to ray-tracing-based propagation modeling.


Cryptography ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Mitchell Martin ◽  
Jim Plusquellic

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are primitives that are designed to leverage naturally occurring variations to produce a random bitstring. Current PUF designs are typically implemented in silicon or utilize variations found in commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts. Because of this, existing designs are insufficient for the authentication of Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs). In this paper, we propose a novel PUF design that leverages board variations in a manufactured PCB to generate unique and stable IDs for each PCB. In particular, a single copper trace is used as a source of randomness for bitstring generation. The trace connects three notch filter structures in series, each of which is designed to reject specific but separate frequencies. The bitstrings generated using data measured from a set of PCBs are analyzed using statistical tests to illustrate that high levels of uniqueness and randomness are achievable.


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