An environmentally friendly technology of disassembling electronic components from waste printed circuit boards

Electronic components (ECs) disassembling from waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs) is the first and essential step in WPCBs recycling chain. Over the past decades, primitive methods like simply heating WPCBs on a coal-heated plate to melt solders are dominated in practice, causing serious environmental pollution and also putting a real threat to the human health. In order to solve this problem, in this article, an automatic system in pilot-scale for ECs disassembling from WPCBs is designed, manufactured, and investigated. This system contains two parts: ECs automatic disassembly and off-gas purification. Meanwhile, WPCBs from television (i.e., TV-WPCBs) and personal computer (i.e., PC-WPCBs) are used for disassembling tests, respectively. When the disassembling temperature, rotating speed, and incubation time are 265 +/- 5 degrees C, 10 rpm, and 8 min, respectively, the solder can be completely removed from both TV-WPCBs and PC-WPCBs. No pollutant is discharged from this system. Finally, the disassembling procedures for ECs from both TV-WPCBs and PC-WPCBs are suggested to promote WPCBs disassembling in an environment-friendly way, without threaten the environment and human health. (c) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.