Snigdha Mishra, Timothy Hunter, Kamal Kishore Pant, David Harbottle

Green Deep Eutectic Solvents (DESs) for Sustainable Metal Recovery from Thermally Treated PCBs: A Greener Alternative to Conventional Methods

  • General Energy
  • General Materials Science
  • General Chemical Engineering
  • Environmental Chemistry
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Waste PCBs—the core of e‐waste—are rich in copper, tin, zinc, iron, and nickel. Leaching base metals from PCB used to be done in toxic, corrosive acidic/alkali mediums. In this work, an environmentally friendly method for leaching metals from thermally treated PCBs (TPCBs) of mobile phones were proposed using choline chloride based deep eutectic solvents (DESs). DES selectivity and solubility of metals from metal oxides were the main screening criteria. FA‐ChCl had the maximum solubility of Cu, Fe, and Ni, while Urea‐ChCl had high Zn selectivity and solubility. Oxalic acid has high selectivity for Sn. FA‐ChCl extracted Cu and Fe best at 16 h, 100 °C, and 1/30 g/mL. Urea‐ChCl extracted Zn (90.4 ± 2.9%) from TPCBs at 100 °C, 21 h, 1/20 g/mL, and 400 rpm. Oxalic acid (1M) removed 92.3 ± 2.1% Sn from TPCBs in 1 h at 80 °C and 1/20 g/mL. The shrinking core model‐based kinetic investigation of FA‐ChCl for Cu extraction showed a diffusion‐controlled process. The proposed method is greener than mineral acids utilised for metal extraction.

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