Recovery of Cu and Fe from Printed Circuit Board waste sludge by ultrasound: Evaluation of industrial application

The paper presents a novel cleaner process for metal recovery from the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) waste sludge by assistance of ultrasound. The process can effectively recover heavy metals at low cost with high separation and recovery efficiency, produce high quality products and also achieve zero waste discharge with operation at industrial scale. With the PCB waste sludge containing (wet content) 3.14–4.85% copper and 3.71–4.23% iron, copper recovery efficiency of 95.2–97.5% and iron recovery efficiency of 97.1–98.5% were achieved, while the purity of copper sulfate produced by the process was 98.0% and the produced ferric chloride had a satisfied quality for using as a coagulant material for the plant on-site wastewater treatment. The process had been successfully scaled up to the industrial scaled applications in a heavy metal recovery plant in city of Huizhou, China for more than two years. The novel cleaner heavy metal recovery process has a great prospect on the applications of resources recovery and environmental protection practices.