Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are copper-coated plastic layers that connect electrical components using conductive tracks, metals and glass.
Printed Circuit Boards can be found even in the simplest electronic products. The global PCB manufacturing market is estimated to be in the size of 80 billion Us dollars a year. High demand from smart phones and media devices in consumer electronics, is the main growth driver. PCBs constitute 10% of the total E-Waste by weight (which is said to total 50 million tonnes a year)
Most of the precious metals content in e -waste is concentrated on these printed circuit boards. Depending on the type of the circuit board, a ton of circuit boards may contain from 10 gr to 1,000 gr of gold in addition to silver, palladium and copper.
This means circuit boards contain 40-800 times more gold than one ton of mined gold ore. 300-1000 gram of gold is recovered from 1 ton of scrap mobile phone boards.
Recycling of these circuit boards are carried out responsibly at refineries abroad. Recycling usually starts with the shredding of the boards to smaller sizes by powerful shredders. Both hydro and pyrometallurgical processes are employed to recover the valuable materials.
Mostly used pyrometallurgical process involves smelting of the boards in a furnace to concentrate precious metals in copper which will than be separated by copper electrolysis. Up to 98% of the precious metals can be recovered by this process.
GCL collects and recycles more than 2,000 tons of circuit boards every year including:
Computer motherboards, Telecommunication boards, Main Server and Plug and Play Boards Mobile phone cards, Wireless telephone cards, Medical device Boards, LCD TV cards, Control Panel cards, Printer, Scanner, Fax machine cards, Rams, Hard disc boards, CPUs, Military boards from ships, submarines and aircrafts, POS terminal boards etc.
GCL has extensive knowledge of printed circuit boards and their precious metals contents. We provide consultancy and refining services to our clients as well.
Please contact us to receive more information about our PCB recycling business.