Recovery of copper and lead from waste printed circuit boards by supercritical water oxidation combined with electrokinetic process

An effective and benign process for copper and lead recovery from waste printed circuit boards (PCBs) was developed. In the process, the PCBs was pre-treated in supercritical water, then subjected to electrokinetic (EK) process. Experimental results showed that supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) process was strong enough to decompose the organic compounds of PCBs, and XRD spectra indicated that copper and lead were oxidized into CuO, Cu2O and beta-PbO2 in the process. The optimum SCWO treatment conditions were 60 min, 713 K, 30 MPa, and EK treatment time, constant current density were 11 h, 20 mA cm(-2) respectively. The recovery percentages of copper and lead under optimum SCWO + EK treatment conditions were around 84.2% and 89.4%, respectively. In the optimized EK treatment, 74% of Cu was recovered as a deposit on the cathode with a purity of 97.6%, while Pb was recovered as concentrated solutions in either anode (23.1%) or cathode (66.3%) compartments but little was deposited on the electrodes. It is believed that the process is effective and practical for Cu and Pb recovery from waste electric and electronic equipments. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.