Recycling Technologies of PCBs

Recycling of electronic circuits in general and Printed Circuit Boards, in particular, are very important for the protection of environment. It is also a good source of rare and costly metals in trace amount and proper recycling of PCBs can help recover these elements with minimum environment cost. Several recycle technologies were reviewed in this paper. From the review, it is observed that there are three main stages of PCBs recycling mainly pre-treatment, physical separation and chemical separation. In pre-treatment stage, crude separation is made and toxic parts as well as parts that can be disassembled are removed. After this process, the physical separation process starts where metallic and non metallic materials are separated after proper size reduction by appropriate technologies. Metallic and Non- metallic materials are sent for further management. Most of the time chemical separation is used to recover materials. Many scientists are also working to get metallic and non metallic parts separately and developing use of non magnetic materials as sheet so that environment can be effectively protected.