A Potential Alternative for Precious Metal Recovery from E-waste: Iodine Leaching

Printed circuit board (PCB) is the essential part of electronic devices and has an important source of base and precious metals with high economic potential. In this study, selective leaching of gold from PCB was performed in an iodine-hydrogen peroxide (I-2-H2O2) solution system. The effects of different parameters such as iodine concentrations, H2O2 concentrations and solids-% on the gold leaching dynamics were investigated. The results show that increasing solids-% has a negative influence on the gold leaching. However, gold recovery from the e-wastes in a solution containing 3% iodine, 1% H2O2 with solids-% of 15% resulted with 100% recovery among all leaching tests.