Crushing performance and resource characteristic of printed circuit board scrap

Abstract

The crushing performance of printed circuit board (PCB) was studied on several crushers. The results show that PCB is a material which is difficult to crush. The crushing performance of PCB with disk crusher, especially vibration grinding, which has cut or impact action, excels that of jaw crusher or roller crusher. The PCB scrap is worthwhile to recycle using variety of modern characterization methods. When compared with natural resources, this material stream remains a rich precious metal and nonferrous metals. In PCB scrap, metals account for 47% of the total material composition, in which there exists 19.66% copper, 11.47% iron, 3.93% lead, 300 g/t gold and 5–10 kg/t silver, etc. In addition, the PCB scrap contains 27% of plastics and 26% of refractory oxides.

Keywords

electronic scrap / printed circuit board / crushing / recycling