Recovery of Metals from Waste Printed Circuit Board by Electrostatic Separator

Study on electronic scrap (ES) reutilization has important significance and application values, which can not only achieve secondary resources recycling, but also prevent environment pollution. Waste printed circuit board (PCB) is the most important parts of ES and also one of the most arduous jobs to deal with because of its heterogeneity and high complexity. The distinct difference of conductivity between metals and nonmetals provides a feasibility to recover metals from PCB on -2+0.074 mm fraction adopted an innovative high tension electrostatic separator. In the paper, ANSYS/Emag software was introduced to simulate electric field and voltage distribution under different electrode structures. And the simulated results are in good agreement with the experiments. Experiment results show that for -2+0.5 mm feed PCB, after the separation, metal content of concentrates is about 88.58% ~ 99.79%, and the rate is about 33.40% ~ 49.87%. About 89.32% integration efficiency could be achieved and the corresponding integration efficiency is 96.46% when power supply voltage was 27KV, roller rotation speed being 80 rpm and four corona electrodes and one static electrode applied. The electrostatic separation technologies can be used for recycling of metal materials from Waste printed circuit board.