Hydrometallurgical Methods for Extracting Non-ferrous Metals from Electronic Gadgets

Abstract

This article explores an environmentally friendly method of complex processing of printed circuit boards of cell phones in order to extract gold and other valuable components without cyanides. Thiourea was used as reagents for leaching gold and silver. A nitric acid-based solder solvent was used to separate the electronic components and gold plating from the printed circuit boards. To eliminate the harmful effect of copper on thiourea, the printed circuit boards were not crushed at the gold recovery stage. As a result, Ag 51 % and Au 89 % were extracted at t = 60 °C and a thiourea concentration of 12 g/L. The presented method is environmentally friendly in comparison with cyanide methods of gold recovery and effective in terms of the amount of gold recovery.