See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/236888453

Printed circuit board recycling process and its environmental impact

assessmentnted Circuit Boards

Article  in  International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology · October 2006

DOI: 10.1007/s00170-006-0656-6

CITATIONS READS

26 1,669

5 authors, including:

Dong Xiang PENG MOU

Shandong Jianzhu Uniersity Tsinghua University
64 PUBLICATIONS   1,725 CITATIONS    40 PUBLICATIONS   246 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Hong-Chao Zhang
Texas Tech University
228 PUBLICATIONS   4,060 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Remanufacturing decision making View project

TxDOT Project 0-6868 - Novel Material Systems for the Next Generation of Flexible Pavement Structures View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Hong-Chao Zhang on 20 May 2014.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2007) 34:1030–1036
DOI 10.1007/s00170-006-0656-6
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Printed circuit board recycling process
and its environmental impact assessment
Dong Xiang & Peng Mou & Jinsong Wang &
Guanghong Duan & Hong C. Zhang
Received: 13 February 2004 / Accepted: 18 April 2006 / Published online: 6 October 2006
# Springer-Verlag London Limited 2006
Abstract As the foundation for almost all electronic
products, the printed circuit board (PCB) recycling issue
has received much attention from the government, enter-
prises, and communities. In order to develop environmen-
tally friendly recycling processes of PCB, the advantages
and disadvantages of the existing PCB recycling process
are analyzed first. Aimed to the disadvantages of the
existing recycling processes, the physical recycling process
is selected and improved as the solution to PCB recycling.
In the improved process, a spray water process is super-
imposed on the shredding and smashing process and the
industrial dust and irritant odor can be eliminated effec-
tively. In order to reduce the noise impacts, the equipments
are insulated within a cabin mounted sound-absorbing
materials and it makes operators expose the noise under
80 dB(A). In the end, the environmental impacts of the
improved PCB recycling process are assessed from the
aspects of resources consumption, wastewater, and damages
to human health.
Keywords Environmental impact assessment .
Printed circuit board . PCB recycling
D. Xiang (*) : P. Mou : J. Wang : G. Duan
Department of Precision Instruments and Mechanology,
Tsinghua University,
Beijing 100084, China
e-mail: xd@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn
H. C. Zhang
Texas Tech University Lubbock,
Lubbock, TX, USA
e-mail: Hong-Chao.Zhang@coe.ttu.edu
1 Introduction
Over the past ten years, growing attention has been given to
the affects of hazardous components in electronic equipment.
E-wastes have become one of the most important obstructions
of electronic industry development. In China, the number of
retired computers is about 5 million. If we take the 10 million
per year increasing sales volume into account, the recycling
task will be serious in the future [1]. According to an
estimation of a research project, there were about 12.75
million retired computers in the USA in 2002, in which there
were 10.2 million retired computers exported to Asia. The
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC), a coalition advo-
cating for a clean and safe high-tech industry, conducted an
investigation that provided the basis for a report released on
25 February 2002, entitled Exporting harm: The high tech
trashing of Asia [2]. The report documents findings in China,
India, and Pakistan that reveal extremely hazardous and
dangerous e-waste recycling operations that pollute the air,
water, and soil of Asian countries and endanger residents. In
April of 2002, China Central Television reported about
environmental pollution from e-waste recycling in Guiyu
town, Guangdong province [1]. The report aroused the
attention of governments and the public.
In e-wastes, there are two types of components that are
difficult to recycle. One is printed circuit board (shown in
Fig. 1); the other is cathode-ray tube (shown in Fig. 2). In
this paper, a new environmental friendly PCB recycling
process is discussed in detail.
2 Analysis of the existing PCB recycling process
PCB is the foundation for almost all electronic products in
the world. According to the statistic report of IPC, the
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2007) 34:1030–1036 1031

Mounted PCB

Disassembly

PCB wastes

Shredding

Fig. 1 The wastes of PCB

Smashing
production value of PCB is over $30 billion. At the same
time, the life cycle of many products are dramatically
shortened. All these factors cause more and more electronic Separation
equipment to come their end-of-life stage all over the
world. There are two types of PCB wastes that need to be
recycled. One comes from retired electromechanical prod-
ucts; the other comes from the waste of PCB production
processes.
Currently the technologies used for PCB recycling/ Metal powder Nonmetal powder
disposal can be divided into three branches according to
Fig. 3 Physical recovering process
the different material recovering processes: thermal pro-
cessing, chemical processing, and physical processing [3].
The goal of thermal recovering processing is to get the
3. The capital investment is enormous. Besides the
metal alloy with incineration and metallurgy. Although this
equipments investment of metal recycling, the invest-
method is simple and available, there are still some
ment in waste air processing must be taken into
unsolved problems.
account, which includes the expenditure of furnace
1. The nonmetal material cannot be reused and recycled. cupola, gas-washing tower etc.
2. Much waste air and industrial dust (including some
deleterious gases, such as dioxin, lead fume and so on)
will be produced during the incineration processes.

Fig. 2 The wastes of CRT Fig. 4 The paste of the smashed PCB powder
1032 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2007) 34:1030–1036

Table 1 The relationship between incidence, exposure years, and noise equivalent intensity

Equivalent continuous noise level dB(A) Years of exposure to noise (unit year)

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

≤80 Incidence of disease (%) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Rate of hearing impairments (%) 1 2 3 5 7 10 14 21 33 50
85 Incidence of disease (%) 0 1 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 7
Rate of hearing impairments (%) 1 3 6 10 13 17 22 30 43 57
90 Incidence of disease (%) 0 4 10 14 16 16 18 20 21 15
Rate of hearing impairments (%) 1 6 13 19 23 26 32 41 54 65
95 Incidence of disease (%) 0 7 17 24 28 29 31 32 29 23
Rate of hearing impairments (%) 1 9 20 29 35 39 45 53 62 73
100 Incidence of disease (%) 0 12 29 37 42 43 44 44 41 33
Rate of hearing impairments (%) 1 14 32 42 49 53 58 65 74 83
105 Incidence of disease (%) 0 18 42 53 58 60 62 61 54 41
Rate of hearing impairments (%) 1 20 45 58 65 70 76 82 87 91
110 Incidence of disease (%) 0 26 55 71 78 78 77 72 62 45
Rate of hearing impairments (%) 1 28 58 76 85 88 91 93 95 95
115 Incidence of disease (%) 0 36 71 83 87 84 81 75 64 47
Rate of hearing impairments (%) 1 38 74 88 94 94 95 96 97 97

Chemical recovering processing is involves putting
precious metals with acid. In Guiyu town, Guangdong
province, the people just adopted this method to recover
precious metal. In chemical recovering processes, much
wastewater (such as waste acid, various waste metallic
ions and so on) is produced. Because money to purchase
water-treating equipments is deficient, the ecologic
environment of Guiyu town is destroyed seriously. The
Lianjiang River that flows across Guiyu town has no life.
So chemical recovering processing must deal with the
following problems:
1. In order to dispose the wastewater from PCB recycling,
the water treatment equipments must be installed,
which is very expensive.
2. The nonmetal materials are carbonized because of the
chemical action of strong acid. So they cannot be
reused and recycled.
Physical recovering process includes the disassembly of
components, the shredding and smashing of PCB, separa-
tion of metal and nonmetal powder (shown in Fig. 3). The
following are the main environmental problems of PCB’s
physical recovering process:
1. Noise pollution. Noise mainly comes from the equip-
ment of the shredding and smashing process. The noise
intensity of this equipment is about 130 dB(A).
2. Industrial dust pollution. Industrial dust is produced in
the shredding and smashing process of PCB. For there
are various materials (e.g., metal, resin, and glass fiber)
in fine dust, they can cause damage to human health.
For example, the glass fiber particles can make the
operator’s skin itch and the heavy metal may cause
various occupational diseases.
3. Irritant odor. In the shredding and smashing process of
PCB, the temperature will rise soon and the resin of
PCB will decompose. So we can smell an irritant odor.
According to the above analysis, we can know that the
three recycling processes of PCB all have some environ-

Fig. 5 Metal particles and non-

metal (color)
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2007) 34:1030–1036 1033

3 Improving the physical recycling process of PCB

Because the investment of the physical recycling process is

Fig. 6 Wastewater
mental problems. Combined with the situation of Chinese
corporation, the physical recycling process is considered as
the best solution if its existing environmental problems are
solved effectively.
much less than the thermal recycling and chemical
recycling processes, we decide to improve the existing
physical recycling process and solve the problems of
industrial dust, odor, and noise.
In industrial dust from the PCB recycling process, the
main contents include resin dust, glass fiber dust and metal
dust. These industrial dusts can cause pneumoconiosis and
other occupational respiratory diseases. Moreover, because
PCB includes many heavy metals, they can cause serious
damage to health if these metal dusts are inhaled into
human body. For example, lead can damage the human’s
nervous system, reproductive system, skeleton and so on. In
China, national standard stipulates the maximum discharge
amount of lead dust is 0.05 mg/m3. Table 2 illustrates there
are 3032 μg lead in 1 g recycled metal from PCB.
Obviously, if the metal dust cannot be controlled effective-
ly, aserious result will occurr. In addition, the glass fiber
dust will cause not only respiratory diseases but also
dermatoses. So in the recycling process of PCB, it’s highly
important to reduce or eliminate industrial dust.
Odor results from the decomposition of resin under high
temperature. The damage of resin decomposition is uncer-
tain. In order to avoid the irritant odor from the decompo-
sition of resin, some people adopt liquid nitrogen to reduce
the temperature of PCB in the shredding and smashing
process. In addition, liquid nitrogen can increase the
brittleness of PCB and make PCB smash easily because
of its extreme low temperature. Unfortunately liquid
nitrogen cannot avoid industrial dust and may result in a

Table 2 Metal elements content of 1 g metal particles Unit: μg/g

Element Cu Au Cd As Pd Pb Sn Ni Ag
Content 992894.73 8.38 2.81 45.6 161.3 3032 3824 24.34 6.84

Table 3 Metal ions content of 1 liter waste water Unit: mg/L

Metal ion Cu Au Cd As Pd Pb Sn Ni Ag
Content 0.42 0.02 0.015 ND 0.14 0.02 0.05 0.04 ND

Note: ND represents No Detect

Table 4 Metal elements content of 1g nonmetal particles Unit g/g

Element Bi Mn Ni Zn Fe Cu
Content ND 4.74E-5 4.18E-6 5.75E-5 3.33E-3 1.19E-2
Element As Au Cd Sn Sr Se
Content ND 1.19E-5 6.85E-7 7.32E-4 6.40E-4 1.52E-4
Element Ba Ti Zr Al Cr Mo
Content 1.61E-3 2.54E-4 1.02E-5 3.10E-2 2.20E-5 1.15E-6

Note: ND represents no detect

1034 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2007) 34:1030–1036

Table 5 The structure of energy resources in Beijing [4]

Electric-power output in Beijing (unit billion KW·h) Fuel used for generating electric energy

Hydro-electricity Thermal Nuclear Raw coal Fuel oil Fuel gas

power electricity 104 tons 104 tons 104m3
9.49 162.57 0 628.64 40.69 33285

high cost of equipment. In order to reduce or eliminate the as the paste in Fig. 4. So industrial dust is avoided
impact of industrial dust, we often adopt two methods. One effectively. Moreover, the soaking PCB powder can easily
is sealing off the pollution source; the other is avoiding be collected and transported with no dust.
industrial dust actively. Noise negatively affects human health and well-being.
On the basis of the analysis of the existing technique, we Problems related to noise include hearing loss, stress, high
superimpose a spray water process on the shredding and blood pressure, sleep loss, distraction and lost productivity,
smashing process. In this process, water as a medium plays a and a general reduction in the quality of life and
great role in reducing or eliminating the industrial dust and opportunities for tranquility [6]. Table 1 illustrates the
odor effectively. The circulating water in the process can take relationship between the hearing impairments and noise.
away the heat from the shredding and smashing process of Obviously, noise is one of the most important impact
PCB and avoid the irritant odor. Although the hydrophilicity factors in human health.
of the substances of PCB is poor, the water in the shredding In the physical recycling process of PCB, the equipment
and smashing process still makes the smashed PCB powder of the shredding and smashing process can result in about
130 dB(A) of noise. So if the noise cannot be reduced, the
Table 6 The emissions of the different style for generating electric operators’ health will be damaged seriously.
energy (unit 1TJ)
In order to solve the noise pollution, the equipment is
Style for generating Emissions unit Discharge insulated within a cabin mounted sound-absorbing material.
electric energy kg amount Sound insulation measure makes operators expose the noise
under 80 dB(A). In addition, the automatization of
Electricity by fuel gas CO2 208705
feedstock can shorten the noise exposure time of operators.
Dinitrogen oxide 419
HALON-1301 0.000438
So according to Table 1, the recycling process of PCB
Methane 496 doesn’t cause noise-induced impairments.
Nitrogen oxides (as NO2) 418.17 According to the above-improved solution, we design the
Sulphur dioxide 91.5655 key equipment and build a production line. Figure 5 is
...... ...... the separation result of metal and nonmetal. In addition, for
Electricity by Raw coal CO2 270413 the water can be recycled and reused, only a little water is
Dinitrogen oxide 703 emitted in all processes. Figure 6 shows the wastewater.
HALON-1301 0.000655
In order to analyze the environmental impact of PCB
Methane 1169
Sulphur dioxide 1107.87 recycling process, the metal particles, nonmetal particles
Nitrogen oxides (as NO2) 702.048
Nitrate 6.43825
...... ...... 642308.9
800000
Electricity by Fuel oil CO2 242085
Dinitrogen oxide 548
600000
HALON-1301 0.01794
Methane 400000
308
Sulphur dioxide 2542.58 200000 0.01 746.06 103.83
Nitrogen oxides (as NO2) 543.756
...... ...... 0
Hydro-Electricity CO2 1108 GWP ODP acidification eutrophication
Dinitrogen oxide 0.016
HALON-1301 0.0000185 GWP 642308.9 kg CO2 eq.
Methane 2.45 ODP 0.01 kg CFC-11eq.
Nitrogen oxides (as NO2) 4.25727 Acidification 746.06 kg SO2 eq.
Sulphur dioxide 3.06571 Eutrophication 103.83 kg PO4- eq.
...... ......
Fig. 7 The environmental impacts of energy consumption of PCB
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2007) 34:1030–1036 1035

Table 7 The most allowable effluent concentration of China national by energy consumption with Eq. (1). The results of
standards (Unit: mg/L) environmental impacts assessment are illustrated in Fig. 7.
No. Pollutants The most allowable
effluent concentration X
n X
n
EI ð jÞi ¼ EI ð jÞi ¼ Qi  EF ð jÞi ð1Þ
1 Total mercury 0.05 i¼1 i¼1
2 Total cadmium 0.1
3 Total chromium 1.5 Where Qi is the emission of substance i; EF(j)i is the
4 Total arsenic 0.5 substance (i)’s equivalency factor for the environmental
5 Total lead 1.0 impact category j; EI(j)i is the emission’s contribution to
6 Total nickel 1.0 the environmental impact j.
7 PH 6∼9
The main environmental impacts are illustrated in Fig. 7.
8 Cu 0.5
9 Zn 2.0
From Fig. 7, we can know the environmental impacts
10 Mn 2.0 caused by energy formation mainly include global warming
... ...... ...... potential (GWP), ozone-depletion potential (ODP), acidifi-
cation, and eutrophication.

4.2 Environmental impact of wastewater

and the wastewater are checked with the ICP-AES. The
results are shown in Tables 2, 3 and 4.
4 Environmental impact assessment of PCB recycling
process
In order to assess the environmental impact of the PCB
recycling process, the scale of disposal PCB must be
defined first. In our lab, the PCB disposal capability is
about 1000 tons per year.
4.1 Resources consumption
In this PCB recycling process, the electric energy con-
sumptions are about 140 kw per hour, which is the main
cause of environmental impact. According to the structure
of energy resources in Beijing (shown in Table 5) and
emissions from energy formation processes (shown in
Table 6), we can assess the environmental impact caused
In our PCB recycling processes, the particles in the water
will be separated with a shaking table. The metal particles
can be collected directly. The nonmetal particles are filtered
with a microstrainer. The filtered water will be reused in
smashing PCB chops and separating metal and nonmetal
particles, so only a little wastewater is emitted to the envi-
ronment. Table 3 is the metal ions contents in the
wastewater. Obviously, the contents are much less than
the city pollution exhaust criteria of China, which is shown
in Table 7 [5]. Figure 8 illustrates the comparison between
wastewater and China pollution exhaust criteria.
According to every metal amount in wastewater in
Table 3 and the equivalency factor in Table 8 [7], the
environmental impacts of wastewater can be estimated with
Eq. (1). The results are
Environmental impact on freshwater aquatic ecotox-
icity =655.2 mg 1,4-dichlorobenzene eq.
Environmental impact on freshwater sedimental ecotox-
icity =1609.3 mg 1,4-dichlorobenzene eq.

4.3 Human health damage caused by physical process

2. 5
of PCB recycling
effluent concentration

2
Because the spray water process and the sound insulation
1. 5 measures are adopted, the human health damage resulting
from industrial dust and noise is very little from the above
1
analysis. So we mainly analyzed the damage from the metal
0. 5 ions in wastewater. According to Table 3, the main metal
ions in wastewater are Cu, Au, Cd, Pd, Pb, Sn, Ni, and Ag.
0 However, there are five substances which cause damage to
Cu Cd As Pb Ni Cr Zn Mn human health, viz Cu, Cd, Pb, Sn, and Ni. With Eq. (1) and
pollutants the equivalency factor for human toxicity in Table 9, we
Fig. 8 Comparison between emissions to wastewater and the emission can get the emission’s contribution to human toxicity,
standard which is shown in Table 9.
1036 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2007) 34:1030–1036

Table 8 The environmental impacts of metal in waste water Unit: mg 1,4-dichlorobenzene eq

Metal ion Cu Cd Pb Sn Ni

Equivalency factor for freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity 1.2E3 1.5E3 9.6 1.0E1 3.2E3
Environmental impact on freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity 504 22.5 0.192 0.5 128
Total of environmental impact on freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity 655.2
Equivalency factor for freshwater sedimental ecotoxicity 2.9E3 3.9E3 2.5E1 5.2 8.3E3
Environmental impact on freshwater sedimental ecotoxicity 1218 58.5 0.5 0.208 332
Total of environmental impact on freshwater sedimental ecotoxicity 1609.3

Table 9 The human toxicity of metal in waste water Unit: mg 1,4-dichlorobenzene eq

Metal ion Cu Cd Pb Sn Ni

The equivalency factor for human toxicity 1.3 2.3E1 1.2E1 1.7E-2 3.3E2
Environmental impact on human toxicity 0.546 0.345 0.24 8.5E-4 13.2
Total of environmental impact on human toxicity 14.3

5 Conclusion References

The recycling process proposed in this paper can separate
metal and nonmetal effectively. The separating ratio is above
95%. A high separating ration is the basis to reuse metal and
nonmetal. The precious metal can be refined from the metal
powder through metallurgy and the nonmetal can be used as
filling material for building materials etc.
Through superimposing a spray water process on the
shredding and smashing process, the industrial dust and
irritant odor can be eliminated effectively. So the negative
impacts on ecology quality and human health can be
reduced effectively.
Acknowledgements The project supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (contract No.:50445003) and The
National High Technology Research and Development Program (863
Program, contract No.: 2002AA421240 and 2004AA420120).
1. China Central Television (2004) The predicament of E-wastes in
China. http://www.CCTV.com (In Chinese)
2. Roman LS, Puckett J (2002) E-scrap exportation: challenges and
considerations. 2002 IEEE international symposium on electronics
and the Environment, 6-9 May 2002, San Francisco, CA, USA
3. Gao Z, Li JZ, Zhang HC (2002) Printed circuit board recycling: a
state-of-art survey. 2002 IEEE international symposium on
electronics and the environment, 6-9 May 2002, San Francisco,
CA, USA
4. The editorial board of China electric power industry (1999) The
annals of China electric power industry. China electric power
industry press (In Chinese)
5. The Standardization Administration of China (2004) The effluent
water quality standard, GB8978-92. Standards press of China (In
Chinese)
6. Schomer P (2004) A white paper: Assessment of noise annoyance.
http://www.nonoise.org/library.htm
7. LCA handbook (2004) http://www.leidenuniv.nl/cml/lca2/index.html

View publication stats