E-waste copper recovery and getting rid of nickel and tin (soldering)
After reading some threads about e-waste in this forum my interest carried away to e-waste recycling from Aluminium recycling start-up.
Had a discussion with a friend in a tea shop.
We both decided to do more readings.
Before that we decided on input. After some analysis we decided on PCB.
Why PCB?
Because PCB is available on everything. From hand mobile to laptop/ PC, etc PCB is everywhere.
Having this in mind went around the government office that enforce pollution standers.
Had a discussion with the officials and getting the certification for e-waste recycling has changed a lot in my country (India) and state (Tamil Nadu) from 2016
Seems like the government is more concerned about the unauthorised e-waste recycling groups. Having this in mind they put more rules on 2017-18.
Seems to be easy to get the government certificate.
Based on all the information we collected we decided to plan further at a very small scale which is 1000 kg PCB processing per day.
We planned the following steps
Step-1:
PCB will be anything from type-1 and type-2. Let the type have as much copper but that should not stop us from going to other less copper rich PCB. Yes, remove the battery and other hazardous things manually from the systems and use a PCB Depopulation system to remove the connect parts from PCB and make it a plain PCB
Step-2:
reduce the pcb by shredding then grinding it then air separate it so that epoxy and metal gets separated.
Step-3:
Repeat the above process for pcb connected parts such as ic, capacitors etc. Yes manual identification is needed.
Step-4:
Having the meal powder that has copper mixed with other metals such as AL, gold , silver etc lets melt it as a anode sheet for electrolysis.
Step-5:
Pure copper of 99.99% from electrolysis has a good value and sell off the precious metal slug which is anode slime that gets collected at the bottom of the electrolysis tub. Or implement aqua regia to get gold which ever is eco friendly. Yes I dont want any Ph reduction process. So mostly we will be selling off those anode slime.
Got quotation for the PCB grinding machine, aqua regia lab ste-up, effluent treatment etc. except electrolysis system.
During the process of getting sale invoice for electrolysis system One friend asked a good question. What will happens to the nickel and tin (soldering) that comes along the PCB till the melting stage? During electrolysis to purify the copper the nickel and tin gets along the cathode from anode and that will make the copper impure.
I am finding answer for this question. How to get rid of the nickel and tin that gets along the anode?
