Waste Management 34 (2014) 2581–2586

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Waste Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wasman

An advanced study on the hydrometallurgical processing of waste

computer printed circuit boards to extract their valuable content
of metals
Ionela Birloaga a,⇑, Vasile Coman b, Bernd Kopacek c, Francesco Vegliò a
a
Department of Industrial and Information Engineering and Economics, University of L’Aquila, Via Giovanni Gronchi 18, 67100 L’Aquila, Italy
b
Department of Physical Chemistry, ‘‘Babesß-Bolyai’’ University, Arany Janos 11, 400028 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
c
Austrian Society for Systems Engineering and Automation, A-1140 Vienna, Gurkgasse 43/2, Austria

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study refers to two chemical leaching systems for the base and precious metals extraction from
Received 13 May 2014 waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs); sulfuric acid with hydrogen peroxide have been used for the first
Accepted 28 August 2014 group of metals, meantime thiourea with the ferric ion in sulfuric acid medium were employed for the
Available online 18 September 2014
second one. The cementation process with zinc, copper and iron metal powders was attempted for solu-
tions purification. The effects of hydrogen peroxide volume in rapport with sulfuric acid concentration
Keywords: and temperature were evaluated for oxidative leaching process. 2 M H2SO4 (98% w/v), 5% H2O2, 25 °C,
Waste computer printed circuit board
1/10 S/L ratio and 200 rpm were founded as optimal conditions for Cu extraction. Thiourea acid leaching
Copper
Precious metal
process, performed on the solid filtrate obtained after three oxidative leaching steps, was carried out with
Oxidative leaching 20 g/L of CS(NH2)2, 6 g/L of Fe3+, 0.5 M H2SO4, The cross-leaching method was applied by reusing of thio-
Thiourea cross leaching urea liquid suspension and immersing 5 g/L of this reagent for each other experiment material of leach-
ing. This procedure has lead to the doubling and, respectively, tripling, of gold and silver concentrations
into solution. These results reveal a very efficient, promising and environmental friendly method for
WPCBs processing.
Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction physical properties have been performed by various researches,

The treatment of wastes coming from electronic and electric
equipments (EEE) exhibits two main advantages: (i) reduction of
land filling, avoiding in this way the environment pollution with
the hazardous content of these kinds of wastes and (ii) reutilization
of the recovered materials in the manufacturing of the new EEEs.
For their processing, many researchers have studied and proposed
various processes, e.g. physico-mechanical, hydrometallurgical,
pyrometallurgical, biometallurgical or by combination of thereof
as there are present in the reviews of Cui and Zhang (2008),
Tuncuk et al. (2012) and Pant et al. (2012). As all the EEEs have
in their structure a motherboard, component which has a high
amount of valuable metals, most of scientific papers were focused
on their treatment. Beside their valuable metals content, the
WPCBs have about 70% nonmetals which mainly consist in epoxy
resins, glass fibers and brominated flame retardants. The mechan-
ical–physical processes for the separation of elements by their
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 (0) 862434236; fax: +39 (0) 862 434203.
E-mail address: ionelapoenita.birloaga@graduate.univaq.it (I. Birloaga).
but these have as main drawback the fact that a complete libera-
tion cannot be realized, this resulting in a considerable loss of valu-
able metals. Therefore, the mechanical–physical process is
generally used prior to pyro-, bio- or hydro-metallurgical processes
as a pretreatment. The pyrometallurgical process consist in a very
high working temperature, i.e. 1200 °C, thereby this kind of process
always requires high investments (Flandinet et al., 2012). Beside
this, the required high temperature leads to the releases of dioxins
into atmosphere (Tsydenova and Bengtsson, 2011). As is shown in
literature, the bio-metallurgical methods, e.g. biological leaching is
slower and more toxic than the chemical leaching (Pant et al.,
2012). Thus, the hydrometallurgical processes, which consist in a
first step of metals extraction into solution by chemical leaching
in acid or alkaline medium, and then a second step that consists
of solution purification by various methods such as precipitation,
cementation, absorption, ion exchange, electrowinning and solvent
extraction, are considerate environmental friendly and more easily
to be controlled due to their moderate working conditions.
For metals recovery from waste printed circuit boards, most of
the scientific papers present as main steps the following

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2014.08.028
0956-053X/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2582 I. Birloaga et al. / Waste Management 34 (2014) 2581–2586
operations: dismasting of hazardous components (i.e. capacitors,
resistor, batteries), comminuting, in some cases a thermal treat-
ment, chemical leaching, solution purification and metals recovery.
Reagents like the inorganic acids (sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid
and nitric acid), organic acids (citric acid, oxalic acid) or solution
with alkaline character (ammonium and sodium hydroxide) have
been used for base metals leaching, afterwards a subsequent leach-
ing on the solid suspension has been applied with chemicals such as
cyanide, thiosulfate, thiourea and halides for the precious metals
recovery (Birloaga et al., 2013; Jianfeng et al., 2009; Kim et al.,
2011; Lee et al., 2011; Oishi et al., 2007; Kamberović et al., 2011;
Zhou and Qiu, 2010; Zhu et al., 2011; Fogarasi et al., 2013;
Fogarasi et al., 2014; Yang et al., 2011a,b). Many hydrometallurgical
attempts were tried to extract copper from the composition of
WPCBs, this ‘‘red gold’’ being considerate the major metallic ele-
ment in the composition of these wastes. The sulfuric acid is a cheap
reagent and was widely used at industrial level for metals recovery
from ores and presents good efficiency on Cu dissolution in the
presence of hydrogen peroxide; therefore this system was consid-
ered by many authors a very suitable chemical leaching system
for Cu dissolution from waste printed circuit boards (Yang et al.,
2011a,b). This system presents the advantage of a lower toxicity
and the possibility to be used at industrial scale due to its less cor-
rosive nature. Conversely, for precious metals recovery there are
still problems in the development of a reliable and less poisonous
hydrometallurgical route. As a conscience of accidents produced
in the gold mining industry (e.g. Mine from Los Frailes, Spain in
1998; Mine from Baia Mare, Romania in January 2000) (European
Commission, 2010), the use of cyanide, reagent with a high level
of toxicity, was tried to be replaced by less poisonous reagents.
The leaching with thiosulfate could be considerate a good way for
precious metals but with the issues of high cost raised in the puri-
fication step this method cannot be considered suitable for applica-
tion at large scale. Application of halides can be regarded efficient as
they present high leaching rates, but as the use of an oxidant (usu-
ally the halogen of the halide itself) is required, this would lead to
high costs for the prevention of corrosion and the use of a bound
system; therefore, there is no economy for their use at industrial
level (Yang et al., 2011a,b; Zhang et al., 2012; Syed, 2012). The pre-
cious metals leaching with thiourea could be regarded as a suitable
method due to its high rate of leaching, lower toxicity and eco-effi-
ciency. Beside these advantages, this process has as main drawback
the fact that a lot of reagent is consumed.
Therefore, the present study complement the previous work
(Birloaga et al., 2013) with the core to obtain a total extraction of
copper, gold and silver from waste computer printed circuit boards
and also to reduce the consumption of reagents during the thioure-
ation process. For both reduction of reagent consumption and
improving of precious metal content into solution, three-stage thio-
urea acid cross-leaching process was applied. The paper shows new
data for the application of the thiourea cross leaching procedure for
precious metals extraction, this method not being until now stud-
ied or applied on WPCBs treatment and the obtained results are
considered helpful for a possible application at industrial scale.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Materials
Experimental tests were performed on a sample of waste com-
puter printed circuit board. This was preliminary subjected to
manual removal of some electronic components (e.g. capacitors,
batteries, relays) and then crushed to a certain particle size (less
than 2 mm). The chemical attack with aqua regia and hydrofluoric
acid was performed on a certain amount of the material obtained
after preliminary roasting for 1 h at 6000C in a muffle furnace
(Humboldt, H-30204F) and milling in a planetary ball mill (Fritsch
Pulverisette Mod. 06 102/2045) (more details are shown elsewhere
(Birloaga et al., 2013)). According to Atomic Absorption Spectrom-
etry, which was used for determination of elements concentration
in the solution obtained after chemical attack, the sample con-
tained 305.7 g/kg of Cu, 116.9 g/kg of Al, 152.1 g/kg of Fe, 73.6 g/
kg of Sn, 15.8 g/kg Ni, 18.6 g/kg of Zn, 67 g/kg of Pb, 238 mg/kg of
Au and 688 mg/kg of Ag. In the case of thiourea leaching two sam-
ples of waste CPU and CPU connection pins manually removed
from their surfaces were used as control experiments to test the
leaching efficiency of the thiourea approach. Chemicals used in
the experiments were of analytical reagent grade. The leaching
solutions were prepared by dissolving the proper chemicals in dis-
tilled water to the required concentration.
2.2. Methods
2.2.1. Oxidative leaching
Leaching tests were performed in 250 ml Erlenmeyer flasks and
placed in a Dubnoff water bath (BSD/D, ISCO, Italy) with a mechan-
ical stirring rate of 200 rpm for three hours. 10 g of ground waste
printed circuit boards (<2 mm particle size) were immersed in
100 ml solutions that contains sulfuric acid as leaching reagent
and hydrogen peroxide as oxygen source. As was observed in our
previous work, in two steps oxidative leaching not all copper was
extracted, leading to a efficiency of about 70% of gold extraction
(Birloaga et al., 2013). For a complete removal of copper, 3 consec-
utive leaching tests were performed by the following process con-
ditions: 2 M H2SO4, 5% H2O2, 25 and 30 °C and three hours of
stirring. Process conditions were: 2 M H2SO4, 5% H2O2 (20 mL of
30% H2O2), 30 °C and three hours of mechanical stirring
(200 RPM). The effect of different procedures of H2O2 addition to
the solution containing 2 M H2SO4 and WPCB was estimated and
summarized below. The addition was performed either (A) in one
step (20 mL at t = 0); (B) in two steps of 10 mL (t1 = 0,
t2 = 90 min); (C) in four steps of 5 mL (t1 = 0, t2 = 45, t3 = 90,
t4 = 135 min); (D) in eight steps of 2.5 mL at every 22.5 min.
At the end, the leaching suspensions were filtered under vacuum
and the cakes washed, then the pH of pregnant solutions was mea-
sured. A sample of 5 ml of each solution was withdrawn for XRF
(Semi-Quantitative X-ray florescence spectrometry, Spectro Xepos)
and AAS (atomic absorption spectrometry, VARIAN AA240FS). The
solid material was further used for acid thiourea leaching.
2.2.2. Acid thiourea leaching
Thiourea leaching tests were performed on the solid residues of
oxidative leaching. Leaching conditions adopted were: 100 ml (1/
10 S/L ratio) of solution containing 20 g/L of thiourea, 6 g/L of ferric
ion and 0.5 M H2SO4 (pH = 1) and continuous stirring at room tem-
perature. An Innova 2000 (New Brunswick Scientific) open air sha-
ker was used for the experiments and the stirring rate was
500 RPM.
The chemical analyzes of all samples generated in the various
leaching tests were also performed by flame atomic absorption
spectroscopy (AAS) and Semi-Quantitative X-ray florescence spec-
trometry (XRF).
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Base metals recovery
3.1.1. Three step oxidative leaching
The extraction yields (% of the total amount in the WPCB
sample) for the metals are summarized and plotted in Table 1
 I. Birloaga et al. / Waste Management 34 (2014) 2581–2586 2583

and Fig. 1 for the cases of single and double addition of H2O2 (A and
B). The data was provided by XRF measurements.
As can be seen from the previous tables and figures, there is no
significant difference between the two cases when the addition of
H2O2 is done differently (one vs two steps). In both cases Cu is lea-
ched almost entirely into solution with a small amount (0.47% and
1.74%) left in the solid residue after the three step leaching proce-
dure. The distribution of the entire quantity can be summarized as
follows: around 80% in the first leaching step, 14–19% in the sec-
ond step and 1.5–2.5% in the third step. Apart of Cu, Zn is also
almost entirely leached in the solution, following a similar distri-
bution through the leaching steps. As expected, the entire amount
of Au remains in the solid residue in both cases. A notable differ-
ence can be observed in the case of Ni, where a large quantity is
dissolved in the second leaching step of the second case (B) com-
pared to the same step of the first case (A). The higher leaching rate Fig. 1. Extraction yields for metals following a three step oxidative leaching
of Ni in the second step is explained by its presence in both metal- procedure; experimental conditions: 10 g WPCB A; 100 mL 2 M H2SO4, 20 mL 30%
H2O2 (single addition at t = 0), 30 °C, 200 RPM, 3 h.
lic and alloy form in the composition of PCBs. Therefore, as is
shown in the galvanic series, this element has a higher susceptibil-
ity to the oxidation process than when this is alloyed with other
metals. Consequently, it is considered that in the first leaching step
only the metal element was dissolved with a large part of copper.
In the second step a lower quantity of the oxidant was consumed
for Cu and, consequently, a larger oxygen concentration was
remained for displacement of Ni electrons from its alloy form.
As a conclusion of these tests it can be stated that by using a
three step oxidative leaching procedure, around 99% of the Cu
can be removed from the solid WPCB sample while all Au is kept
in the solid.
For a better differentiation of the leaching efficiency of the dif-
ferent procedures for of H2O2 addition to the acid solution, a com-
parison was made for Cu, Fe, Ni and Zn for the four cases
mentioned above (A–D). The values of the metal amounts found
in solution after one leaching step, are depicted in Fig. 2. All values
were divided by the highest metal amount found between the four
cases. As can be seen from the figure, the highest leached amount Fig. 2. A comparison between the leaching efficiency for Cu, Fe, Ni and Zn, in the
of metal for Cu, Fe and Ni are encountered in the first case (A, one case of different procedures for H2O2 addition (single vs multiple steps).

step addition at t = 0). Since our main objective is the complete

removal of Cu from the solid WPCB sample, it can be stated that
a procedure with one or two steps of H2O2 addition (A and B) is
the most effective, since in case D, for example, the amount of Cu
found in solution after 3 h of leaching represents only 73% of the
quantity found after test B. The reason for such behavior resides
in the oxidation potential which obviously becomes more signifi-
cant at high hydrogen peroxide doses. This leads also to the accel-
eration of reaction kinetics, as this process depends not on the
liquid-phase diffusion but on the rate of the reaction at the surface
(Adebayo et al., 2003).
3.1.2. Temperature effect on the oxidative leaching of Cu
A comparison was made between the leaching efficiency for Cu
at ambient temperature vs 30 °C. This aspect is very important
especially for industrial applications of the metal recovery technol-
ogy, when temperature control translates into energy consumption.
For this purpose two test were carried out simultaneously at
ambient temperature with the two most effective H2O2 addition
procedures mentioned above, that is one step in the beginning of
the experiment (A) and two steps at the beginning and the half time
(B). The results are plotted in Fig. 3.
As it can be seen in Fig. 3, there is no significant difference
between the two operating temperatures, all the values of Cu con-
tent in the leaching solutions being above 97.5% from the maxi-
mum value registered. When the increasing of temperature is
applied to solution, the hydrogen peroxide degrades to water and
oxygen. These results point out the successful application of the
oxidative leaching procedure at ambient temperature which
avoids the decomposition of H2O2 (Yang et al., 2011a,b).
3.2. Thiourea leaching of Au
The reactions occurring in the gold extraction with thiourea
(TU) and ferric ion into diluted sulfuric acid solution are described
by the following equations (Li and Miller, 2007):

Table 1
Extraction yields for metals following a three step leaching procedure. Experimental conditions: 10 g WPCB A; 100 mL 2 M H2SO4, 2  10 mL 30% H2O2 (t1 = 0; t2 = 90 min), 30 °C,
200 RPM, 3 h.

Test B Metal (%)

Al Cu Fe Sn Ni Zn Pb Ag Au
Leaching 01 33.78 77.41 61.40 44.44 26.09 81.91 1.49 25.38 0.00
Leaching 02 27.94 19.16 12.72 26.98 56.52 13.83 1.49 22.37 0.00
Leaching 03 17.61 1.70 2.19 9.52 4.35 1.06 1.49 13.01 0.00
Res. (solid) 20.67 1.74 23.68 19.05 13.04 3.19 95.52 39.24 100.00
2584 I. Birloaga et al. / Waste Management 34 (2014) 2581–2586

Table 2
Metal concentration in solution after one step thiourea leaching.

Sample Metal (mg/L)

Cu Sn Ni Zn Pb Ag Au
I 5.3 9.7 195.0 6.5 1.3 4.0 54.3
II 18.3 9.6 159.0 84.8 0.5 28.1 29.8
III 250.0 10.2 301.0 245.0 10.7 3.9 5.4
IV 63.5 9.6 44.3 10.4 7.6 7.9 20.1

Table 3
Comparison between metal concentrations in solution after thiourea leaching.

Sample Metal (mg/L)

Cu Sn Ni Zn Pb Ag Au
TL01 99 755 17 12.5 13 32.5 12.5
TL02 178 817 25 48 17 47.3 14.6
Fig. 3. A comparison between the oxidative leaching efficiency for Cu at ambient TL03 256 279 39 53 16 37.1 11.5
temperature (22 °C) vs 30 °C. A and B represent the previously described TL04 283.5 768 49 78 19 17 3.1
procedures for H2O2 addition.

2TU þ 2Fe3þ ¼ FDS þ 2Fe2þ þ 2Hþ ð1Þ

FDS þ 2TU þ 2Au þ 2Hþ ¼ 2AuðTUÞþ2 ð2Þ

The jointing between these two reactions results in the follow-
ing global reaction:

2Au þ 2Fe3þ þ 4TU þ SO2

4 ! 2½Au2 ðTUÞSO4 þ 2Fe
2þ
ð3Þ
The oxidation of thiourea (TU) by ferric ion (Eq. (1)) leads to the
formation of formamidine disulfide (FDS), which, due to the
increase in ambient electromotive force could be forward oxidized
to unwanted compounds, like elemental sulfur and cyanamide.

H2 NACNHASASACNHANH2 ! H2 NACSANH2 þ H2 NACBN þ S

ð4Þ
The elemental sulfur rapidly covers the gold surface with a thin
film, hindering in this way the metal transfer within solution.
Therefor, to avoid this undesirable phenomenon, a strict control
of the experimental conditions must be ensured.
As the gold dissolution is strongly determined by pH (Pyper and
Hendrix, 1981), sulfuric acid in a concentration of 0.5 M was added
to achieve a pH value of 1. An Innova 2000 (New Brunswick Scien-
tific) open air shaker was used for the experiments and the stirring
rate was 500 RPM.
The procedure proved to be efficient on four different samples
consisting of manually removed pins from a CPU surface (I), one
ceramic CPU unit with pins remains (II), pins from a motherboard
(peripheral connections) (III) and a WPCB sample resulted after
three consecutive oxidative leaching steps (IV). The amount of
metals found in the leaching solution after filtration was deter-
mined using XRF and the values are summarized in Table 2.
As observed in Table 3, the amount of Au varies in the solution
as a function of the sample content. The reason for giving all these
values is to show that the procedure is efficient in leaching Au. In
the case of the WPCB sample (IV), according to XRF measurements
all the amount Au was leached into solution, the content in the
solid residue being below the detection limits of the measuring
apparatus. The low value measured in the case of sample III can
be also influenced by the high amount of Cu in the sample which
negatively influences the leaching of Au, by decomposing thiourea.
When copper is present with a high concentration in the gold sam-
ple, this is dissolved also into acid solution especially due to ferric
ion presence. The Cu (II) ions presence leads to the oxidation of
thiourea according to the above reaction:
Fig. 4. Metal concentration variation with the number of leaching steps.
Z
Cu2þ þ ðn þ 1ÞSCðNH2 Þ2 ¼ CuðSCðNH2 Þ2 Þþn þ ðNH2 ðNH2 ÞCSSCðNH2 ÞNH2 Þ2þ
ð5Þ
This detrimental effect of cupric ion produces also the decom-
position of formamidine disulfide to elemental sulfur which inhib-
its the gold dissolution by its passivation on the precious metal
surface (Rong Yu Wan et al., 2005).
The Fe concentration was excluded from the table since it is
added from the beginning to the solution as Fe(III) up to a concen-
tration of 6 g/L.
In order to concentrate the solution in Au, an experiment was
performed by using the same solution of thiourea and multiple
solid samples in a step by step manner. After each step, the leach-
ing solution was filtered and a sample was taken for XRF measure-
ments. The composition of the solution after three consecutive
leaching steps is given in Table 3.
An important aspect worth mentioning here is the fact that the
leaching solution was kept at 4 °C overnight between the second
and the third leaching phase. The metal concentrations increase
in the solution after the second leaching phase, especially Cu and
Zn, where the amount is 1.8 times higher for Cu and 3.84 times
higher for Zn. In the case of Au, the concentration after the second
leaching phase becomes 1.17 times higher. This relatively small
increase could be caused by the high amount of Cu in the solution.
In the third stage the increase trend appears only for Cu, Ni, and Zn,
while for the rest of the metals, the concentration decreases. The
 I. Birloaga et al. / Waste Management 34 (2014) 2581–2586
Table 4
Cementation with Zn for a sample resulted after oxidative leaching of a WPCB powder.
Sample Al (ppm) Cu (ppm)
Initial 2700 16,780
Final 1730 ND
Rem. (%) 35.9 100.0
ND – not detected.
unusual behavior in the third stage can have multiple causes, such
as: the long time lapse between the tests (thiourea instability); the
high amount of Sn present in the solution after the first two leach-
ing stages, which decreases significantly after the third step
(precipitation); a possible cementation of Ag and Au caused by
the metallic Al, Zn and Cu present in the solid WPCB sample. In
the fourth stage, the decrease in Au and Ag concentration is even
larger than for the previous step, most probably due to a precipita-
tion/cementation phenomenon.
Moreover, a new set of tests was performed using the same
leaching conditions adopted before: 100 ml (1/10 S/L ratio) of solu-
tion containing 20 g/L of thiourea, 6 g/L of ferric ion and 0.5 M
H2SO4 (pH = 1) and continuous stirring at room temperature. An
Innova 2000 (New Brunswick Scientific) open air shaker was used
for the experiments and the stirring rate was 500 RPM. The leach-
ing was run in three consecutive steps using a new solid sample
every time (10 g WPCB) with the mention that a certain amount
of thiourea (5 g/L) was added to the solution before the second
and third leaching step.
Compared to the previous case, the increase in metal concentra-
tion is visible for each element and monotonous for Cu, Ag and Au.
A comparison between the three metals is shown in Fig. 4, where a
linear correlation between the concentration and the number of
leaching steps is noticeable. The Au concentration reaches
79.1 mg/L, while Ag reaches 121.1 mg/L (Fig. 4).
These results indicate that in the first leaching step most part of
thiourea (TU) was oxidized to formamidine disulfide (FDS) by ferric
ion (see Eq. (2)), and therefore a higher concentration of TU by one
of FDS must is required to achieve a good extraction of precious
metals. Therefore, in a multistage cross leaching, the improve of
thiourea concentration in the reused solution by a smaller amount
than in the first step should to be considered to both enhance pre-
cious metals transfer into solution and to avoid reagent decompo-
sition which adversely affects the extraction rate of these elements
(Foley et al., 2000).
3.3. Cementation experiments
The cementation was tested on a solution resulted after one
step of oxidative leaching and on synthetic solutions of Au. In the
case of Au, a solution containing 20 mg/L Au in 2 M H2SO4 was
treated with Zn, Cu, and Fe powder. According to the XRF analysis
results, the cementation with Zn and Cu was successful, the
amounts of Au present in solution after cementation and filtration
being below the detection limits (<0.1 mg/L). When using Fe, the
cementation was unsuccessful in the given conditions, Au being
still present in the solution.
For the solution resulted after one oxidative leaching test, the
cementation with Zn gave the following results, presented in Table 4.
A volume of 50 ml was treated with 2 g of Zn at room temperature
for 15 min under vigorous magnetic stirring, and the resulted solu-
tion was then filtered and analyzed. The composition of the initial
and final solution was determined by XRF measurements.
As can be seen from the table, Cu was removed entirely from
the solution, while for Fe, Ni, and Sn, the removed amounts from
the initial values were approximately 58%, 81%, and 94%,
respectively. Pb and Ag were omitted from the table due their very
2585
Fe (ppm) Sn (ppm) Ni (ppm) Zn (ppm)
1254 656 160 1059
532 42 31 40,680
57.6 93.6 80.6
low initial concentrations in the solution (<7 ppm). The resulted
solution contains 40 g/L Zn, which accounts for 95% from all the
metal content in the solution. The impurities consist of Al (4%)
and small amounts of Fe, Ni and Sn. The cement contains mainly
Cu, with a purity of approximately 87%.
The present results of cementation experiments are a prelimin-
ary evaluation of metals extraction from solution and will be dis-
cussed in details in a further experimental work.
4. Conclusions
On the strength of the results obtained within the framework of
this paper it can be inferred that the oxidative leaching of copper
with sulfuric acid as lixiviant and hydrogen peroxide as oxidation
agent shows a good extraction level of metal only when the H2O2
is immersed at the beginning of leaching process; this is due to
great oxidation potential of hydrogen peroxide. Increasing of tem-
perature did not produce an improving of base metal extraction
efficiency, this due to the degradation of oxidant. A good efficiency
on gold extraction was obtained by the thioureation process
applied on the solid filtrate obtained after three steps of the oxida-
tive leaching process. The three-step cross thiourea leaching has
lead to obtaining of a concentrated gold–silver solution, with a
lower consumption of reagents. This last hydrometallurgical pro-
cess presents a suitable method in the treatment of waste printed
circuit boards for precious metals recovery, and could help the
industry in developing of an environmental friendly and economic
technology in the treatment of these wastes. The reduction of
leaching reagents and energy consumption during the oxidative
leaching process of copper and the cementation process for both
copper and precious metals will be discussed in a further experi-
mental work. It is worth mentioning that the further work will
include a cost/benefit analysis aiming to scale-up the proposed
strategy in WPCBs recycling industry.
Acknowledgements
This research was carried out under the EU Project HydroWEEE
demo (coordinated by Dr. Bernd Kopacek). The authors would like
to acknowledge to Fabiola Ferrante and Marcello Centofanti for
their help during this experimental work. Special thanks to Depart-
ment Industrial and Information Engineering and Economics, Uni-
versity of L’Aquila, for technical assistance, and providing all of the
facilities needed for the experimental work.
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