Recovery Of Copper From Printed Circiut Boards Through Electrolytic Process –A Case Study

Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) collected from local sources were used for recovering copper by electrolytic process, using a laboratory reactor setup of working volume 15 liters and nitric acid for dissolution. Copper plate was used as the cathode and graphite rod as the anode for the deposition process. Five durations were adopted both for the dissolution and deposition processes. Based on the above investigations it found that 5 hours for 132 gm copper has dissolved and the maximum copper deposited was 14.861 gm in 120 minutes, which is equal to 12% of maximum recovery of copper from the PCBs. The maximum power consumption is found to be 0.0214 kWh for 14.861 gm of copper recovered. The maximum copper (Cu) recovered in 120 minutes of the deposition process can be considered as the optimum for the 5 L of dissolved solution. There is scope to refine the process and scale it up, if proper funding and facilities are made available.