Analysis on the Copper Metabolism in Printed Circuit Board Industry

Substance flow analysis (SFA) is a kind of quantitative analysis on the metabolism of industrial process. This paper analyzed the metabolism route of copper, the main contaminant of PCB industry from the aspect of enterprise, in the manufacturing of PCBs, calculated the flux of copper between all the nodes, and studied the efficiency of copper in order to improve it. As shown from this paper, the relatively low efficiency of copper usage resulted in the copper contamination of PCB industry, which was often emitted into the environment as etching waste liquid or solid waste. Therefore, this paper proposed that we should regard the improvement of the efficiency of copper usage as key to cut off copper contamination in PCB industry, namely the focus on cleaner production with recycling of copper wastes.