Journal of Cleaner Production 95 (2015) 142e147

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Lead during the leaching process of copper from waste printed circuit
boards by ve typical ionic liquid acids
Mengjun Chen*, Sha Zhang, Jinxiu Huang, Haiyan Chen
Key Laboratory of Solid Waste Treatment and Resource Recycle (SWUST), Ministry of Education, Southwest University of Science and Technology, 59
Qinglong Road, Mianyang, 621010, China

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 2 December 2014
Received in revised form
1 February 2015
Accepted 17 February 2015
Available online 3 March 2015

Waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs) contain both valuable resources and toxic substances, causing
serious pollution to the environment if not treated appropriately. However, currently almost all researches are focused on valuable resources recovery, mainly copper, without considering the effect of
toxic substances, such as lead, during the recycling process. Hence, we selected lead to represent the
heavy metals and examined its behavior in typical ionic liquid (IL) acids leaching system. The factors that
affect lead leaching rate, such as particle size, temperature, ionic liquid concentration, H2O2 adding
amount and solid to liquid ratio, were examined in detail. The results show that particle size, IL acid
concentration, solid to liquid ratio and hydrogen peroxide dosage hardly affect lead leaching rate for
[BSO4HPy]HSO4, [BSO3HMIm]HSO4 and [MIm]HSO4, while lead leaching rate is signicantly inuenced
by these factors for [BSO3HMIm]OTf and [BSO3HPy]OTf. For copper, it is totally on the opposite. It is hard
to discuss the leaching kinetics for lead, while for the leaching of copper, diffusion plays a more
important role than surface reaction. Most importantly, compared to lead, IL acids seem to show a
selectivity for copper leaching out from WPCBs. Therefore, IL acids could be a prospective choice for
leaching copper from WPCBs.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
WPCBs
Ionic liquids (ILs)
Lead
Leaching kinetics

1. Introduction
Printed circuit board (PCB) is an important part of electronic
industry. From personal computers, TVs, communication equipment to electronic toys, almost all of the electronic products
contain circuit board. Both technological innovation and market
expansion accelerate the replacement of electric and electronic
equipment (EEE), which leads to a signicant increase of waste
PCBs (WPCBs). WPCBs have been attracting the public attention by
its environmentally harmful materials and abundant valuable nonferrous metals. It contains plenty of toxic substances, such as
brominated ame retardants (BFR), PVC plastic and heavy metals.
In general, WPCBs contain approximately 30% metals and 70%
nonmetals. Especially, the typical metals in WPCBs consist of copper (20%), iron (8%), tin (4%), nickel (2%), lead (2%), zinc (1%), silver
(0.2%), gold (0.1%), and palladium (0.005%) (Huang et al., 2009). The
purity of precious metals in WPCBs is at least 10 times higher than
that of rich-content minerals (Guo et al., 2008a). Thus, recycling of

* Corresponding author. Tel./fax: 86 816 2419569.

E-mail address: kyling@swust.edu.cn (M. Chen).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.02.045
0959-6526/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

waste PCBs has become an important issue in the world, not only
from the perspective of environmentally harmful, but with regard
to the recovery of abundant valuable materials (Quan et al., 2010).
Currently, techniques such as chemical, biological and mechanical methods are available for recycling WPCBs. Mechanical
methods, including crushing, vibration and electrostatic separation,
are extensively applied to separate the metals from the nonmetals
of WPCBs (Guo et al., 2008b; Wu et al., 2008; Duan et al., 2009).
Therefore, the mechanical process is usually used as pretreatment.
Some researchers have studied metal recovery from WPCBs with
the aid of chemical and biological processes, such as hydrometallurgy, pyrometallurgy, electrolysis and bioleaching (Veit et al.,
 et al., 2009; Yang et al., 2011). For the bioleaching
2006; Molto
process, the presence of non-metallic components affected the
recovery rate of metals, thus how to improve metals recovery in
bioleaching from WPCBs need further research. Leaching, as the
rst step in the extraction of metals by hydrometallurgical process,
has been given more attention, including nitric acid (Hoang et al.,
2011), ammoniacal sulfate (Guo et al., 2008b) and chloride (Yang
et al., 2011).
Room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs), also called ionic liquids
and considered as the green solution for the future, which are

M. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 95 (2015) 142e147

basically liquid at low temperature typically consisting of an

organic cation with an inorganic or organic anion and have a wide
liquids temperature range (Dong et al., 2009). Currently, ionic liquids are mainly used in the solid waste eld of biomass resources.
In 2012, zhu et al. for the rst time used [EMIM][BF4]- to dissolve
bisphenol A diglycidyl ether contained in WPCBs and achieved the
separation and recovery of copper foil, glass bers and solder at the
same time (Zhu and Chen, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c). Meanwhile, the
ionic liquid [EMIM][BF4]- can be regenerated by washing (Zhu and
Chen, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c), which opened a new stage in the
disposal of electronic waste by ionic liquids. After that Huang et al.
reported that copper can be successfully leached out from WPCBs
by an ionic liquid acid, 1-butyl-3-methyl-imidazolium hydrogen
sulfate ([bmim]HSO4) (Huang et al., 2014). However, all these researches were focused on the recovery of valuable resources,
mainly copper, few work has been reported on the behavior of
hazardous metals, such as lead, during the recycling process.
Based on the work of Huang et al., we further examined other
ve typical IL acids, [BSO4HPy]HSO4, [BSO3HMIm]HSO4, [BSO3HMIm]OTf, [BSO3HMIm]OTf and [BSO3HPy]OTf, to see if these IL
acids could successfully leach copper out from WPCBs. In order to
investigate the behavior of lead during the leaching process by IL
acids, a study is conducted to test if lead could be leached out by
these IL acids simultaneously as copper and to discuss the effect of
lead on copper leaching. Factors that affect the leaching efciency
of lead, such as granularity of WPCBs, ionic liquid acid concentration, solideliquid ratio, leaching time and temperature, have been
studied in detail. At the same time, the data for copper, provided by
supporting information (SI), was introduced to examine the relationship between lead and copper.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Sample preparation
First, WPCBs were cut into small pieces, around
50 mm  50 mm. Then it was further shredded using the Retsch
SM-2000 Cutting Mill (Retsch, Germany), and sieved into different
fractions
using
standard
sieves:
F1
<
0.075
mm,
0.075 mm < F2 < 0.1 mm, 0.1 mm < F3 < 0.25 mm,
0.25 mm < F4 < 0.5 mm and F5 > 0.5 mm. After that, the obtained
powders were digested by microwave aided HNO3eH2O2eHF system (Yamasaki, 1997). Lead concentration of the digested solutions
were analyzed by Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission
Spectrometer (ICP-OES, Thermo Scientic, iCAP 6500) and the results are given in Table 1.

143

experiment. Their structures are given in Fig. 1. The experiment

oxidant is hydrogen peroxide (30 wt.%). Chemicals used in the experiments were all analytical reagents unless otherwise
mentioned. Factors that affect the leaching efciency for the ve IL
acids were investigated separately, which were WPCBs particle
size, IL acid concentration (V/V), IL acid adding amount, H2O2
adding amount, temperature and time, and the detailed experiment arrangements are given in Table 2. Reproducibility was
guaranteed by repeating each experimental run at least twice. The
relative standard deviations of the triplicates were in the limited
ranges of a certied commercial laboratory and mean values are
given in the Tables and Figures without error bar.
Lead leaching rate is expressed as the lead extracted from the
original sample to the proportion of the leaching solution, which is
calculated according to the following formula:

lead leaching rate

lead extracted into leaching solution

total lead in waste PCBs specimens
 100%

(1)

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Effect of particle size
Fig. 2 shows the effect of particle size on lead leaching rate. As it
can be seen in Fig. 2, the leaching rate of lead increases with the
increase of particle size. Take [BSO3HMIm]OTf for example, lead
leaching rate increases from 0.83% to 41.44% when WPCBs particle
size increases from <0.075 mm to >0.5 mm. For the rest four IL
acids, lead leaching rate is not signicantly affected by particle size
changes in the whole investigated range. For instance, lead leaching
rate for [MIm]HSO4 slightly increases from 1.15% to 4.53% as particle
size increasing from <0.075 mm to >0.5 mm.
Under the same conditions, compared to lead, copper leaching
rate is signicantly affected by WPCBs particle size (SI, Fig. S1). For
example, for [MIm]HSO4, copper leaching rate increases rapidly
from 8.85% to 75.71% when the particle size increases from <0.075
to >0.5 mm, while lead leaching rate is slightly changed in the
range of 1.15%e4.53%. Second, copper leaching rate possesses an
effective size range and this phenomena is consistent with the results reported by Zhu et al. (Zhu et al., 2011), who found that the
maximum leaching efciency of copper was obtained when the
particle size was about 18 mme25 mm. This is reasonable since the
smaller the particle size, the bigger surface area per unit mass and
particleeparticle collision would greatly increase if the particle size
is bellow a critical level.

2.2. Leaching experiments

3.2. Effect of ionic liquid acid concentration

All the leaching experiments were carried out in a batch of

250 mL glass conical asks placed in a constant temperature water
bath oscillator, using a constant oscillating frequency of 250 rpm at
40e70  C. Five ionic liquids, [BSO4HPy]HSO4 (N-sulfobutylpyridinium
hydrosulfate),
[BSO3HMIm]HSO4
(1-sulfobuty-3methylimidazolium hydrosulfate), [BSO3HMIm]OTf (N-sulfobutylpyridinium triuoromethanesulfonate), [MIm]HSO4 (Methylimidazolium hydrosulfate) and [BSO3HPy]OTf (1-sulfobutyl-3methylimidazolium triuoromethanesulfate), were used in the

The effect of IL acid concentration on lead leaching rate is shown

in Fig. 3. In general, IL acid concentration has a pronounced effect
on metal extraction. For different ionic liquid, the effect on lead
leaching rate is different. [BSO3HMIm]OTf and [BSO3HPy]OTf show
greater effect than the other three IL acids. Lead leaching rate by
[BSO3HMIm]OTf is in the range of 6.98%e20.04%, while it is around
3% for [BSO4HPy]HSO4, [BSO3HMIm]HSO4 and [MIm]HSO4. The
acidity of [BSO4HPy]HSO4, [BSO3HMIm]HSO4 and [MIm]HSO4
should be higher than [BSO3HMIm]OTf and [BSO3HPy]OTf because

Table 1
Lead concentration in the ve fractions of WPCBs by ICPOES.
Particle size, mm

F1 (<0.075 mm)

F2 (0.075e0.1 mm)

F3 (0.1e0.25 mm)

F4 (0.25e0.5 mm)

F5 (>0.5 mm)

Pb wt. %

1.67

0.97

1.29

1.42

0.62

144

M. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 95 (2015) 142e147

Fig. 1. Ionic liquid acid used in this study.

Table 2
Experimental arrangement.
Factors

Levels investigated

Waste PCBs particle size, mm

F1 (<0.075 mm), F2 (0.075e0.1 mm),

F3 (0.1e0.25 mm), F4 (0.25e0.5 mm),
F5 (>0.5 mm)
10%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%
2, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30
0, 2, 5, 7, 10, 15
1:1, 1:2.5, 1:5, 1:7.5, 1:10, 1:15
5, 10, 20, 30, 60, 120, 240, 480
40, 50, 60, 70

IL acid concentration, v/v

IL acid adding amount, mL
H2O2 adding amount, mL
Solid/liquid, g/mL
Time, min
Temperature,  C

the former three with HSO-4 could be classied to strong inorganic

acid, while the latter two are strong organic acid. Generally, the
former three should have a higher lead leaching rate than the latter
two because of higher acidity. However, the results was on the
opposite. The reason should be further investigated. What should
be pointed out is that WPCBs contains tin as well which also reacts
with acid but forms SnO2 precipitate that may hinder the leaching
of lead (Manis et al., 2012).
IL acid concentration shows a totally different trend for copper
leaching rate (SI, Fig. S2). First, as discussed previously, these ve IL
acids show a greater impact on copper leaching rate, from around
20% to almost 100%, than lead leaching rate which is within 20% in

Fig. 2. Effect of particle size on lead leaching rate by ionic liquid acids.

the whole investigated range. For copper, IL acid concentrations of

the ve IL acids except [MIm]HSO4 indicate a similar impact like
other inorganic acids (Hoang et al., 2011) and IL acids (Dong et al.,
2009), which is increasing as the increase of acid concentration. In
addition, not like lead, copper leaching rate by BSO4HPy]HSO4,
[BSO3HMIm]HSO4 and [MIm]HSO4 is higher than [BSO3HMIm]OTf
and [BSO3HPy]OTf, which is consisted with the acidity.
3.3. Effect of hydrogen peroxide dosage
Fig. 4 presents the lead leaching rate with the variation of
hydrogen peroxide. Lead leaching is not signicantly affected by the
variation of hydrogen peroxide for [BSO4HPy]HSO4, [BSO3HMIm]
HSO4 and [MIM]HSO4, which is almost below 3%. Take [BSO3HMIm]
HSO4 as an example, lead leaching rate slightly increases from
0.46% to 0.93% as hydrogen peroxide dosage increases from 0 to
15 mL. The effect of hydrogen peroxide dosage on lead leaching rate
by [BSO3HMIm]OTf is much stronger, which is 1.88%e26.67% when
hydrogen peroxide dosage is increased from 0 to 15 mL. While
[BSO3HPy]OTf is in the middle. This is similar to the effect of IL acid
concentration such as [BSO3HMIm]OTf and [BSO3HPy]OTf which

Fig. 3. Effect of Ionic liquid acid concentration on lead leaching rate.

M. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 95 (2015) 142e147

Fig. 4. Effect of hydrogen peroxide adding amount on lead leaching rate.

show a higher lead leaching rate than the other three IL acids,
though their acidity is lower than the other three.
Hydrogen peroxide were used as oxidant which would decompose to release oxygen and further together with IL acid to leaching
lead out. Therefore, lead leaching rate should increase with the
increase of hydrogen peroxide dosage. However, as show in Fig. 4
when hydrogen peroxide dosage exceeds a certain level, the overdosed hydrogen peroxide may cause the decomposition of IL acids.
This would be the reason for [BSO3HMIm]OTf, lead leaching rate of
which is rst increased from 1.88% to 26.67% when hydrogen
peroxide dosage was increased from 0 to 10 mL, and then it decreases to 10.57% when hydrogen peroxide dosage continuously
increases to 15 mL. For these ve IL acids, hydrogen peroxide
dosage also shows a much greater inuence on copper leaching rate
(SI, Fig. S3) just as mentioned previously. This could be attributed to
the reason that lead contained in the WPCBs was signicantly
lower than copper, around 2% versus 20%. Also, as previously discussed, on the opposite, [BSO4HPy]HSO4, [BSO3HMIm]HSO4 and
[MIM]HSO4 show a much signicant impact to copper leaching rate
than the other two IL acids, corresponding to their acidity.

145

Fig. 5. Effect of solid to liquid ratio on lead leaching rate.

3.5. Effect of temperature

In a certain temperature range, the rise in temperature could
signicantly increase the mass transfer coefcient and diffusivity,
thus improving the leaching rate. In addition, the increase in solution temperature greatly intensies the reaction activity of acid,
which increases the rate of lead extraction (Manis et al., 2012).
Hence, as the increase of temperature, lead leaching rate should be
greatly increased. However, as shown in Fig. 6, in the IL acid
leaching system, lead leaching rate decreases as the increase of
temperature. The only difference for these ve IL acids is that lead
leaching rate is signicantly impacted by [BSO3HMIm]OTf, followed
by [BSO3HPy]OTf, while the other three slightly decreases as the
increase of temperature. For copper, as shown in SI Fig. 5, it shows
the same trend as lead, which also decreases as the increase of
temperature with a much higher inuence than that of lead. This is
different to those of inorganic leaching system, such as reported by
Hoang et al. (Hoang et al., 2011). This is maybe because that the
content of dissolved oxygen in aqueous phase deceases with the
increase of temperature (Gubbins and Walker, 1965).

3.4. Effect of solid to liquid ratio

3.6. Kinetics analysis
The effect of solid to liquid ratio on lead leaching rate for the
ionic liquid acid is shown in Fig. 5. For the three ionic liquid acids,
[BSO4HPy]HSO4, [BSO3HMIm]HSO4 and [MIM]HSO4, when the
solideliquid ratio decrease from 1:1 to 1:15, lead leaching rate is
not signicantly changed, almost around 2.0%. For [BSO3HMIm]OTf
and [BSO3HPy]OTf, lead leaching rate shows a similar tendency. For
example, [BSO3HMIm]OTf, lead leaching rate rst increases from
17.05% to 28.51%, then decreases to 9.35%, and nally increases to
22.35%. It seems that a lower solideliquid ratio is favorable for the
lead extraction, because increasing the amount of leaching solution
could improve the efciency of mass transfer, thus accelerating the
recovery of lead. However, an over low solideliquid ratio is not
conduced because of the reason of cost-effective.
Obviously, the effect of solid to liquid ratio shows a much bigger
inuence on copper leaching rate (SI, Fig. S4). [BSO3HMIm]OTf and
[BSO3HPy]OTf show an increase trend for copper leaching rate as
the increase of solid to liquid ratio. Generally, this is also true for
lead except for [BSO3HMIm]OTf and [BSO3HPy]OTf. For [BSO4HPy]
HSO4, [BSO3HMIm]HSO4 and [MIM]HSO4, lead leaching rate
steadily increases as the decrease of solid to liquid ratio, just like the
copper leaching rate by [BSO3HMIm]OTf and [BSO3HPy]OTf. While,
copper leaching rate for the three IL acids rst increase and then
decrease as the decrease of solid to liquid ratio, which is totally
different for lead.

Kinetics analysis is conducted based on the relationship between lead leaching rate and time. Fig. 7 gives the results of lead
leaching rate versus time. As can be seen from Fig. 7, lead leaching
rate increases rst and then decreases with the time extension for
both [BSO3HMIm]OTf and [BSO3HPy]OTf. Take [BSO3HMIm]OTf for

Fig. 6. Effect of leaching temperature on lead leaching rate.

146

M. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 95 (2015) 142e147

which is also agreed with inorganic leaching system. The uncommon or even reverse phenomena for lead at these conditions might
be partly attributed to its lower metallicity and lower concentration
as mentioned previously.
For temperature, both copper and lead leaching rate by the
examined ve IL acids decrease as the increase of temperature. This
is different from the inorganic leaching system, because the
leaching rate of inorganic leaching system usually increases as the
increase of temperature. Besides, at a relatively higher temperature,
the viscosity of IL acids would be much lower which would be also
benet the leaching process for both copper and lead. Therefore,
the old mechanism seems not suitable for IL acid leaching system
and new mechanisms should be introduced.
As it can be seen from the Figures, IL acids seem to show a selective leaching for copper, because at most conditions copper can
be successfully leached out from WPCBs with a leaching rate up to
almost 100%, while lead leaching rate is not so high, generally lower
than 30%. This may be attributed to their concentration although
the metallicity of lead is higher than copper.

Fig. 7. Effect of leaching time on lead leaching rate.

an example, when time increases from 0 to 30 min, lead leaching

rate increases sharply from 0 to 82.05% and then it reduced to 4.75%
when the time increases to 480 min. For the rest three kinds of ionic
liquids, lead leaching is not signicantly effected by time. For
instance, for [MIm]HSO4, the lead leaching rate slightly changed
around 2.0%.
The overall leaching process may be controlled by the mass
transfer or the chemical reaction. Usually, the following expressions
can be used to describe the leaching kinetics (Luo et al., 2010):

1  2=3x  1  x2=3 kt
1  1  x1=3 kt

for diffusion control

(2)

for surface chemical reaction control

(3)

In this study, leaching lead from WPCBs by these ve ionic liquid

acids couldn't be explained by surface chemical reaction or by mass
transfer, since either of these two models show an unacceptable
correlation-ship and the results are not shown here. In comparison
with copper (SI, Fig. S6), generally, copper leaching rate increases as
time extension for all the ve IL acids. And, do not like lead, a much
better correlation-ship can be found by [BSO3HMIm]OTf and
[Bmim]HSO4, R2 of which are higher than 0.95. The rest are not so
good and not given here. Research on leaching kinetics has difculties, especially for most multiphase systems because too much
physical and chemical factors to be considered. Moreover, modeling
usually means simplication, in the process of lead leaching, i.e.,
lead concentration in WPCBs is only about 2% while copper is
higher to around 20% as mention previously. Therefore, both the
leaching kinetics of copper and lead in IL acids leaching system
should be reconsidered.
3.7. Relationship between lead and copper during the leaching
process
For the ve IL acids, their effect on lead leaching rate can be
classied to two categories: [BSO4HPy]HSO4, [BSO3HMIm]HSO4
and [MIm]HSO4 with HSO-4 and the other two [BSO3HMIm]OTf and
[BSO3HPy]OTf. The former three show a stronger acidity than the
latter two. For the former three, lead leaching rate is hardly
changed with the variation of leaching conditions, which is totally
different for the latter two: whose lead leaching rates are signicantly changed. For copper, the situation is on the opposite under
most conditions, i.e., particle size, IL acid concentration, solid to
liquid ratio and hydrogen peroxide dosage. And for copper, these
could be well explained by the acidity of the examined ve IL acids,

4. Conclusions
(1) For [BSO4HPy]HSO4, [BSO3HMIm]HSO4 and [MIm]HSO4, lead
leaching rate is hardly changed with the variation of leaching
conditions, particle size, IL acid concentration, solid to liquid
ratio and hydrogen peroxide dosage, while it is signicantly
affected for [BSO3HMIm]OTf and [BSO3HPy]OTf. In comparison with copper, it is totally on the opposite under these
factors and consists with inorganic leaching systems.
(2) Both copper and lead leaching rates by the examined ve IL
acids decrease as the increase of temperature. It is hard to
discuss the leaching kinetics for lead, since the correlationship is unacceptable. For the leaching kinetics of copper,
diffusion may play a more important role than surface
reaction.
(3) IL acids seem to show a selectivity for copper leaching from
WPCBs, since under most conditions, copper leaching rate is
up to around 100%, while lead leaching rate is lower than
30%.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21377104) and by the
Outstanding Young Scientists Support Program of Southwest University of Science and Technology (13zx9110).
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.02.045.
References
Dong, T., Hua, Y., Zhang, Q., Zhou, D., 2009. Leaching of chalcopyrite with Brnsted
acidic ionic liquid. Hydrometallurgy 99 (1e2), 33e38.
Duan, C., Wen, X., Shi, C., Zhao, Y., Wen, B., He, Y., 2009. Recovery of metals from
waste printed circuit boards by a mechanical method using a water medium.
J. Hazard. Mater. 166 (1), 478e482.
Gubbins, K.E., Walker, R.D., 1965. The solubility and diffusivity of oxygen in electrolytic solutions. J. Electrochem. Soc. 112 (5), 469e471.
Guo, Q., Rao, Z., Xu, Z., 2008. Application of glass-nonmetals of waste printed circuit
boards to produce phenolic moulding compound. J. Hazard. Mater. 153 (1e2),
728e734.
Guo, J., Cao, B., Guo, J., Xu, Z., 2008. A plate produced by nonmetallic materials of
pulverized waste printed circuit boards. Environ. Sci. Technol. 42 (14),
5267e5271.

M. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 95 (2015) 142e147

Hoang, L.L., Jeong, J., Lee, J.C., Pandey, B.D., Yoo, J.M., Trung, H.H., 2011. Hydrometallurgical process for copper recovery from waste printed circuit boards (PCBs).
Mineral Process. Extr. Metall. Rev. 32 (2), 90e104.
Huang, K., Guo, J., Xu, Z., 2009. Recycling of waste printed circuit boards: a review of
current technologies and treatment status in China. J. Hazard. Mater. 164 (2e3),
399e408.
Huang, J., Chen, M., Chen, H., Chen, S., Sun, Q., 2014. Leaching behavior of copper
from waste printed circuit boards with Brnsted acidic ionic liquid. Waste
Manag. 34 (2), 483e488.
Luo, W., Feng, Q., Ou, L., Zhang, G., Chen, Y., 2010. Kinetics of saprolitic laterite
leaching by sulphuric acid at atmospheric pressure. Miner. Eng. 23 (6), 458e462.
Manis, K., Archana, K., Pankaj, K., Jae-chun, L., Vinay, J., 2012. Leaching of lead from
solder material of waste printed circuit boards (PCBs). Hydrometallurgy 121 (2),
28e34.
 , J., Font, R., Galvez, A., Conesa, J.A., 2009. Pyrolysis and combustion of elecMolto
tronic wastes. J. Anal. Appl. Pyrolysis 84 (1), 68e78.
Quan, C., Li, A., Gao, N.B., Zhang, D., 2010. Characterization of products recycling
from PCB waste pyrolysis. J. Anal. Appl. Pyrolysis 89 (1), 102e106.
rio, J.A., de Fraga Malfatti, C., 2006.
Veit, H.M., Bernardes, A.M., Ferreira, J.Z., Teno
Recovery of copper from printed circuit boards scraps by mechanical processing
and electrometallurgy. J. Hazard. Mater. 137 (3), 1704e1709.

147

Wu, J., Li, J., Xu, Z., 2008. Electrostatic separation for recovering metals and nonmetals from waste printed circuit board: problems and improvements. Environ.
Sci. Technol. 42 (14), 5272e5276.
Yamasaki, S., 1997. Digestion method for total element analysis. In: Method of Soil
Environmental Analysis, Japanese Society of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition.
Hakuyusya, Tokyo, pp. 278e288 (in Japanese).
Yang, H., Liu, J., Yang, J., 2011. Leaching copper from shredded particles of waste
printed circuit boards. J. Hazard. Mater. 187 (1e3), 393e400.
Zhu, P., Chen, Y., 2012. A new technology for separation and recovery of materials
from waste printed circuit boards by dissolving bromine epoxy resins using
ionic liquid. J. Hazard. Mater. 239e240, 270e278.
Zhu, P., Chen, Y., 2012. A new technology for recycling solder from waste
printed circuit boards using ionic liquid. Waste Manag. Res. 30 (11),
1222e1226.
Zhu, P., Chen, Y., 2012. Treatment of waste printed circuit board by green solvent
using ionic liquid. Waste Manag. 32 (10), 1914e1918.
Zhu, N.W., Xiang, Y., Zhang, T., Wu, P.X., Dang, Z., Li, P., Wu, J.H., 2011. Bioleaching of
metal concentrates of waste printed circuit boards by mixed culture of acidophilic bacteria. J. Hazard. Mater. 192 (2), 614e619.