Journal of Cleaner Production 17 (2009) 1494–1498

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Cleaner Production

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

Recovery of Cu and Fe from Printed Circuit Board waste sludge by ultrasound:

Evaluation of industrial applicationq
Fengchun Xie a, *, Tingting Cai a, Yang Ma b, Haiying Li a, Chuncheng Li a,
Zhiyuan Huang a, Gaoqing Yuan a
a
Department of Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology, Wushan, Guangzhou 510640, China
b
AECOM, 1501 Quail Street, Newport Beach, CA 92660, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The paper presents a novel cleaner process for metal recovery from the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) waste
Received 10 October 2008 sludge by assistance of ultrasound. The process can effectively recover heavy metals at low cost with high
Received in revised form separation and recovery efficiency, produce high quality products and also achieve zero waste discharge
17 June 2009
with operation at industrial scale. With the PCB waste sludge containing (wet content) 3.14–4.85% copper
Accepted 18 June 2009
Available online 7 July 2009
and 3.71–4.23% iron, copper recovery efficiency of 95.2–97.5% and iron recovery efficiency of 97.1–98.5%
were achieved, while the purity of copper sulfate produced by the process was 98.0% and the produced
ferric chloride had a satisfied quality for using as a coagulant material for the plant on-site wastewater
Keywords:
Ultrasound treatment. The process had been successfully scaled up to the industrial scaled applications in a heavy
Metal recovery metal recovery plant in city of Huizhou, China for more than two years. The novel cleaner heavy metal
PCB waste sludge recovery process has a great prospect on the applications of resources recovery and environmental
protection practices.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
With rapidly growing outsourcing of global electronic industry,
in the past several years, Printed Circuit Board (PCB) manufacturing
has been developed dramatically in the coastal areas of China that
makes it the largest PCB manufacturing center in the world [1]. At
the same time, huge quantities of PCB waste have been produced
and made a great impact on the environment in China [2]. PCB
waste sludge, generated by the PCB spent rinse water treatment
process, can release toxic and hazardous substances [3,4] to the
environment thereby threatening public health if not be treated
properly. On the other hand, heavy metals in the PCB waste sludge
can be reused as valuable raw industrial material that is essential to
sustainable development especially under the current resources
crunching circumstances. So it is an urgent task in China to develop
an industrial process for metal recovery from the PCB waste sludge
and eliminate its pollution to environment.
In recent years, many researchers have investigated a number of
approaches on metal recovery from copper-containing waste
q Patent-pending technique: Title: Ultrasonic assisted heavy metal recovery. US
Application No.: 12/388,948; International Application No.: PCT/US2009/002063.
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: tfgd2010@sina.com (F. Xie).
sludge. For example, Hu et al. [5] reported copper recovery from
copper-contaminated sludge via utilizing ferrite and selective
leaching processes. Kuchar et al. [6] used a sulfidation treatment
process for copper recovery from copper-containing plating sludge.
Bakhtiari et al. [7] investigated a bioleaching process for continuous
copper recovery from smelter’s dusts in stirred tank reactors. Choi
et al. [8] studied bioleaching of copper from the waste PCB of
disposed computers. Reddy et al. [9] developed a solvent extraction
process for separation and recovery of copper from sulfate leaching
liquor of synthetic Cu–Ni–Co–Fe matte via using oxime based
extractants. Chang et al. [10] presented a process for copper
recovery form the PCB waste sludge by using chelating agents
leaching and powdered iron cementation process. Oishi et al. [11]
introduced a high purity copper recovery process from disposed
PCB by using ammonia–ammonium sulfate and chloride systems.
In general, due to high investment and operational costs, the above
discussed techniques have so far been applied only on the labora-
tory or pilot scales [12]. In order to realize sustainable development
of natural resources, it is essential to find a reliable and cost-
effective heavy metal recovery technique that not only can be used
for industrial applications, but also does not pose any secondary
pollution threats to the environment and public health during
separation and recovery.
In nearly a decade, power ultrasound has taken a significant
place in chemical and physical activities of the process industries as

0959-6526/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2009.06.012
 F. Xie et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 17 (2009) 1494–1498 1495

an effective and non-polluting method of activation. Sivakumara lot of chemicals being consumed in the process makes it
et al. applied ultrasound in aqueous degreasing process [13], the a high-cost operation. At the same time, normally copper recovery
preparation of fatliquor emulsion [14] and solid-liquid myrobalan efficiency from PCB waste sludge isn’t satisfied since copper is
extraction process [15] for leather making. Song et al. [16] used wasted as solid waste during filtration in the hydrometallurgical
ultrasound to accelerate the enzymatic hydrolysis of the untanned process.
solid leather waste. Chitra et al. [17] investigated the kinetics of There are some applications of the pyrometallurgical and
ultrasonic degradation of EDTA in liquid waste. There are also many hydrometallurgical processes associated [24]. These techniques
reports about heavy metal leaching process that are ultrasonically produce large amount of wastewater and solid wastes and require
assisted [18–22]. However, very few literatures reported the a great deal of chemicals consumption.
simultaneous recovery of copper and iron and the industrial
application of ultrasound in the separation and recovery of metal
from multiple metal-containing waste sludge.
3. The novel cleaner ultrasonically assisted metal
In our previous work, we developed the ultrasonic leaching
recovery process
technique for the separation of copper and iron from PCB sludge in
a lab-scale (Patent Title: Ultrasonic assisted heavy metal recovery.
Unlike prior discussed conventional heavy metal recovery
US Application No.: 12/388,948; International Application No.:
processes, Xie et al. [23] presented ultrasonically assisted acid
PCT/US2009/002063). In this work, we further applied the tech-
leaching technique that provides a novel approach for the sepa-
nique in an industrial scale to establish a novel cleaner process for
ration of copper and iron in PCB sludge. By using the separation
industrial recycling of the waste sludge metals. The detailed
technique, this study discusses a novel cleaner industrial heavy
procedure of the ultrasonic leaching separation of waste sludge
metal recovery process for copper and iron recovery from PCB
metals in a 1-l tank and the affection of the ultrasonic power,
sludge. The process has been successfully implemented at a heavy
leaching time and final leaching pH on the leaching efficiencies
metal recovery plant in Huizhou city in China. The process flow
were presented in the former paper [23]. Differing from foregoing
sheet is presented in Fig. 1 and its detail steps are given as
one, this paper mainly focus on the characters such as recovery
follows.
efficiency, cost, product, waste discharge, etc., of the whole
industrial process for recovery of copper and iron from PCB waste
1. As shown in Fig. 1, PCB waste sludge is first divided into two
sludge in which the ultrasonic leaching technique is applied as its
parts, part A and part B. Under room temperature (the
separation steps. The process has proved capable of cost-effec-
following steps are all performed under room temperature if
tively recovering heavy metals with high separation and recovery
not indicated), part A is completely mixed with a sulfuric acid
efficiency, producing high quality products for reusing and also
solution under stirring for 30 min with a controlled end pH of
achieving zero waste discharge with operation at industrial scale.
approximately 1.5. Then, a 27% hydrogen peroxide solution is
Such a novel and practical process could achieve cleaner produc-
added into it under stirring for 60 min. As a result, most of
tion for resources reuse. The process has been successfully
the sludge has been dissolved in which all ferrous ions have
implemented at a heavy metal recovery plant in Huizhou city of
been oxidized to ferric ions. The reactions are described as
Guangdong Province in China since 2006.
follow.

2. Brief description of the conventional process

There are three approaches for the metal recovery from heavy CuðOHÞ2 þ 2Hþ /Cu2þ þ 2H2 O (1)
metal-containing waste sludge, including thermal treatment (pyro-
metallurgical treatment), wet treatment (hydrometallurgical treat- FeðOHÞ2 þ2Hþ /Fe2þ þ 2H2 O (2)
ment) and a mix of both [24]. In pyrometallurgical treatment process
[25–27], the PCB waste sludge is thermally dried while the metal
FeðOHÞ3 þ3Hþ /Fe3þ þ 3H2 O (3)
hydroxide of the sludge is converted into oxide. Subsequently the
dried sludge is mixed with calcium and silicon as slagging flux and
dispersant to be smelted. During smelting, the separation of copper 2Fe2þ þ H2 O2 þ 2Hþ /2Fe3þ þ 2H2 O (4)
and iron occurs and produces the impure copper. The final refining
stage of the process including fire-refining and electrolytic refining
makes copper pure enough as commercially used product. However,
2. At the same time, part B is completely mixed with water to
the pyrometallurgical process is a high-energy consuming process,
become the slurry. The final water content reaches to 90% by
and its by-products, slag and dust, often cause secondary pollution to
weight. Air is then blown into the slurry to oxidize ferrous
the environment and increase public health risk [28]. Moreover, the
compound of slurry to ferric compound under vigorous stir-
slag usually contains 0.8–3% copper and overall copper loss due to
ring. After completely stirring for about 90 min, slurry is
slag formation is around 3.1% [29]. As a result, the pyrometallurgical
pumped into another tank to produce more fully mixed slurry.
process barely achieves high metal recovery efficiency and makes it
The air oxidation reaction of part B is given as follows.
difficult to recover multiple metals from multiple metal-containing
waste sludge.
The hydrometallurgical treatment [30,31] normally applies
4FeðOHÞ2 þO2 þ 2H2 O/4FeðOHÞ3 (5)
acidic solution or other leach-solvent to fully dissolve (acidify)
metal-containing sludge first, then utilizes ammonia leaching or
staged precipitation or solvent extraction to perform the separa-
tion and purification of metals. The hydrometallurgical process of 3. The aerated part B slurry is slowly added into acidified part A
metal recovery from PCB waste sludge is tedious and complicated. solution with mechanical mixing and simultaneous ultrasonic
It produces a large amount of solid waste and wastewater that treatment with a frequency of 20 kHz and a power intensity of
cause secondary pollution to the environment [32,33]. Moreover, 160 kW/m3. The mixing is maintained for 90 min to reach an
1496 F. Xie et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 17 (2009) 1494–1498

Hydrogen Sulfuric
Peroxide Acid Ultrasound Impure Mother Liquor

Liquid Copper
Part A Acidify Stir Filter Concentration Recrystallization Sulfate
Air Solid (Product)
Sludge Distilled Water

Part B Stir Pump Rinse Dissolute Hydrochloric

Acid

Rinse Water Liquid Ferric

Filter Chloride
(Reused)
Solid

Harmless impurities
Cement Industry
(Minimum Residual)

Fig. 1. The novel ultrasonically assisted treatment process flowsheet.

end pH of approximately 3. At the end pH of approximately 3
the reaction would appear as follows:
2Fe3þ þ 3CuðOHÞ2 /2FeðOHÞ3 þ3Cu2þ
During the reaction, copper in the sludge is dissolved into
solution while iron in the solution is precipitated as part of the
sludge. As a result, the copper and iron are separated into the
liquid solution and solid sludge, respectively. When the solu-
tion reaches pH of 3, with ultrasonically assisted, 97.83% of the
total copper once contained inside the PCB waste sludge enters
into solution, while 98.77% of the total iron becomes part of the
settled sludge.
4. The mixture generated by above step is then pressed by a filter.
The obtained filtrate containing copper produces final copper
sulfate crystals through subsequent concentration and recrys-
tallization. The residual solids during the filtering is taken out
for acidifying by hydrochloric acid after rinsing with water to
produce ferric chloride that can be reused as a coagulant for the
on-site wastewater treatment of PCB manufacturing facility. The
hydrochloric acidification reaction would be stated as follows:
FeðOHÞ2 þ3HCl/FeCl3 þ 3H2 O
4. Improvements and innovations in the novel
cleaner process
of the original PCB waste sludge to produce the fully mixed slurry.
The impure mother liquor generated during recrystallization of the
process is also recycled back to ultrasonically-assisted leaching
(6) stage. As a result, all water in the novel cleaner process is recycled
and reused; no wastewater is discharged from the process.
The novel cleaner process can also reuse iron in the PCB waste
sludge by converting it into ferric chloride that can be easily reused
as a coagulant for on-site wastewater treatment facility of the PCB
manufacturing plant.
4.2. Higher separation and recovery efficiency
In general, the leaching of conventional hydrometallurgical
process dissolves copper and iron of waste sludge all together into
leaching solution. It does not accomplish the separation of copper
and iron within leaching stage and requires additional process steps
to separate these metals. With each process step, more copper loses
with the process so that copper recovery efficiency of the conven-
tional process is lower comparing with the ultrasonic assisted heavy
metal recovery process that realizes copper and iron separation
within leaching stage.
Ultrasonic wave-induced liquid cavitations can refresh and
activate the surface of solids, which increases ion movement from
(7) surface of copper hydroxide into liquid phase. At the same time, by
agitating surrounding fluid and reducing particles’ surface charges,
ultrasonic wave also enhance the aggregate settlement of ferric
hydroxide colloid particles. This dramatically raises copper leaching
efficiency (more leaching) and iron precipitation (less leaching).

4.1. Reduce, recycle and reuse

100
As prior discussed, the conventional hydrometallurgical Cu
processes [30,31] of heavy metal recovery from the waste sludge Fe
requires additional chemicals such as ammonia into the process for 80
% leaching efficiency

separation of different metals, and added material will eventually

be wasted as wastewater or solid sludge that can hardly be recov- 60
ered. The novel cleaner ultrasonic heavy metal recovery process has
no additional chemicals turning into emission waste and most of
40
valuable components of the PCB waste sludge are converted into
reused commercial products. After hydrochloric acidification only
2% PCB waste sludge still remains as inert acid-insoluble solids that 20
reduce waste to minimum.
In the conventional hydrometallurgical processes, process 0
generated wastewater cannot be recycled and reused so it has to be
2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4
discharged [32]. The novel cleaner process recycles distilled water
pH value
produced from concentration stage to rinse the filtered sludge and
wash out the remaining copper ion. This copper-containing rinse Fig. 2. The leaching efficiencies of copper and iron of PCB sludge from ultrasonically
water is conveyed further to assist stirring and mixing with part B assisted leaching.
 F. Xie et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 17 (2009) 1494–1498
Fig. 2 [23] shows different leaching efficiencies of copper and iron of
the PCB sludge processed by the ultrasonic assisted leaching
approach after applying an ultrasonic generator of 160 W in 1-l
volume at 25  C for 60 min. As Fig. 2 revealed, 97.83% of total copper
of the PCB waste sludge has dissolved into solution while 98.77% of
total iron has become part of the precipitated sludge at pH of 3.
Therefore, the most copper and iron of the waste sludge are sepa-
rated in the ultrasonically assisted leaching stage. In the ultrasonic
assisted leaching process used at the heavy metal recovery plant in
Huizhou city, with the raw PCB waste sludge containing 3.14–4.85%
copper and 3.71–4.23% iron, the copper and iron recovery efficien-
cies reached 95.2–97.5% and 97.1–98.5%, respectively. The conven-
tional hydrometallurgical processes normally extract copper with
recovery efficiency of 80–85% [12,34,35].
4.3. Lower recovery cost and higher product quality
Unlike the conventional hydrometallurgical process where
copper and iron cannot be separated in acid leaching stage, the
novel cleaner process does not require adding chemicals for metal
separation and it uses acid only for dissolving copper in the ultra-
sonic assisted acid leaching stage for copper and iron separation,
while the hydrochloric acid is used solely for dissolving iron, and
finally is converted to reused ferric chloride. Furthermore, industry
generated PCB waste sludge is often exposed to air for a certain
amount of time before being treated by a metal recovery system, so
most of its ferrous hydroxide has been already oxidized to ferric
hydroxide. As a result, there is only minimum hydrogen peroxide
consumption in the leaching of the novel cleaner process. In
conclusion the entire novel process uses much less chemicals
compared with the conventional process so the metal recovery cost
in novel process is lower than the one in conventional process.
With higher separation efficiency and less chemicals added in,
the novel cleaner process produces higher quality products. The
purity of copper sulfate produced at the heavy metal recovery plant
in Huizhou city was 98.0% and ferric chloride was used directly as
a coagulant for the on-site wastewater treatment facility in the plant.
4.4. Zero emission/discharge
In the conventional hydrometallurgical process, most of addi-
tional chemicals and rinsing water eventually are converted into
the process generated solid and liquid wastes that increase public
health risk if discharged without any treatment.
In the novel cleaner process, no additional chemicals were
transformed into the process wastes. All added chemicals enter into
end products. All water used in the process is close-loop recycled
and reused, and eventually most of the PCB waste sludge is con-
verted into products. There are no liquid and gas wastes discharged
from the process, only 2% of the treated PCB waste sludge ends up
to as harmless inert acid-insoluble solid residual which contains
mainly calcium sulfate. The one highly sensitive component in
Portland cement, MgO [36] content in the inert solid residual is
only 1.2%. The other highly sensitive component in Portland
cement, CrO [37] is hardly to be detected in the inert solid residual.
So the inert solid residual can be used as raw materials for cement
industry and its impact on the environment is fully eliminated. Zero
emission/discharge has been achieved in the novel cleaner process.
4.5. Larger recovery treatment capacity
The novel cleaner ultrasonically assisted metal recovery process
provides faster and more reliable process than the conventional
hydrometallurgical metal recovery process. It has a higher recovery
rate, with same size reactor and within same process operation time,
1497
treatment capacity of the novel cleaner process is sometimes twice
as bigger than one of the conventional hydrometallurgical process.
4.6. Results from application of the novel cleaner process
The novel cleaner ultrasonically assisted metal recovery process
has been used for PCB waste sludge in a heavy metal recovery plant
in city of Huizhou of Guangdong province in China for more than
two years. The annual PCB waste sludge treated by the novel
cleaner process of the plant was 5800 t in 2007. From it 1000 t 98%
copper sulfate and 3500 t 20% liquid ferric chlorides were
produced. The produced copper sulfate was all sold on market and
ferric chloride was all reused at local PCB manufacturing factories.
There was no second pollution produced by the novel cleaner
process. Only final remains from the process were 120 t harmless
inert acid-insoluble solids that were used as raw material by a local
cement plant. The total investment of the novel cleaner process was
5.2 million Yuan RMB (Chinese currency’s unit), while the annual
profit generated by the process in 2007 was 5.7 million Yuan RMB.
5. Conclusions
It has been demonstrated in this study that an ultrasonically
assisted metal recovery process would achieve complete recovery of
copper and iron from PCB waste sludge by converting them into
separated copper sulfate and ferric chloride solutions. With assis-
tance of ultrasonic application, the process has a very high separation
and recovery efficiency to extract metals from PCB waste sludge and
does not cause any adverse impacts on the surrounding environment.
By applying this technique to a metal recovery facility treating PCB
waste sludge containing 3.14–4.85% copper and 3.71–4.23% iron, final
copper recovery efficiency of 95.2–97.5% and iron recovery efficiency
of 97.1–98.5% were achieved by the process. The purity of copper
sulfate produced was 98.0% and the ferric chloride produced was
allowed using directly in an on-site wastewater treatment facility.
High recovery efficiency of the ultrasonic assisted metal recovery
process provides a cost effective way to recover heavy metal from
industrial waste sludge and reduces public health risk. It reduces
added chemicals consumption and waste emission, recycles all
process water in the process and reuses the iron in the PCB waste
sludge. It is capable of providing higher separation and recovery
efficiencies, lower recovery cost, higher quality product, and zero
process waste emission. It has a great prospect on applications in
heavy metal recovery industry and environment protection practices.
Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to the Nature Science Foundation of
China (20777020), the Enterprise-College-Institute Cooperative
Project Foundation of Guangdong Province and Ministry of
Education of China (2007B090400037), the Science and Technology
Planning Project Foundation of Guangzhou City (2008Z1-E481) for
supporting this work.
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