Recovery of metals in waste printed circuit boards by flotation technology with soap collector prepared by waste oil through saponification

Abstract

Recycling metal from waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs) through green flotation technology has been concerned in this paper. For the sake of environmentally friendly of flotation process, a renewable collector was prepared from waste oil by saponification reaction. The collector composition was analyzed by GC-MS, and results show that the main compositions are n-Hexadecanoic acid, oleic acid and octadecanoic acid. XRD and XRF results show that copper is the main valuable element for recovery. Effects of collector dosage and pH on flotation behavior were analyzed. In addition, the feasibility of improving copper recovery by multiple sorting test processes was also verified. Flotation results show that the concentrate yield and metal recovery decreases with the increase of collector dosage, accompanied by the increase of copper grade. When the dosage of collector is 3 kg/t, concentrate with 22% yield, 66% copper grade, and 47% copper recovery is obtained. Furthermore, concentrate yield and metal recovery rate first decrease and then increase with the increase of pH, while copper content first increase and then decrease. The suitable pH of the separation process is neutral environment (pH = 6-8). The study provides an alternative process for the recovery of metals in WPCBs.

Keywords: Green flotation; Metal recovery; Renewable collector; Waste oil; Waste printed circuit boards.