Printed Circuit boards (PCB), also known as green boards, are designed specifically to support and facilitate the connection of electronic components. They accomplish this through their conductive tracks, pads and etched sheet of copper layer laminated on it.
First off, PCB can be found in the majority of the electronic gadgets and devices popular today. They serve as a conductive foundation where you fix other electronic components, such as capacitors, resistors, inductors and much more.
With its vast use in today’s electronics, printed circuit boards should be recycled when gadgets get spoiled or broken.
WHY RECYCLE PCB?
Recycling printed circuit boards that are populated with many components could yield more valuable materials like:
Gold
Silver
Platinum
Palladium
How? The process extracts components affixed to the boards. Recycling PCB recovers approximately 99 percent of the precious and scarce metals from the recycling process.
The copper part of the board is completely recyclable as a metallic material. Recycling PCB helps reduce depletion of natural resources such as copper, as processors often reuse these boards multiple times. Although, after recycling, they must test the boards as the recycling process might damage certain parts of the board.
In addition, because of the excessive use of this type of circuit board in the electronic manufacturing industries, recycling printed circuit boards reduces solid waste, landfill and land pollution.
How to Recycle PCBs
Due to the complexity of the circuit boards themselves, a wide range of chemicals, metals, and resins are used in the manufacturing process, which makes recycling difficult. Therefore, in order to successfully recycle these circuit boards, recyclers must carefully separate the components to prevent the scarce materials from being completely destroyed.
Again, there are three main methods for recycling printed circuit boards: electrochemical processes, hydrometallurgical processes, and smelting processes.
These methods help in the recovery of valuable electronic components, connectors and metal scrap. Therefore, the most common method of recycling printed circuit boards is disassembly. This involves separating the circuit board from its components. The specific steps are listed below:
1. First, recycling haulers collect these used or damaged circuit boards and transport them to a recycling company.
2. Next, an electronic component disassembler is used so that the components can be easily removed.
3. Final, the recycling is carried out through a machine designed by MINGXIN. Finally, metals, resins, etc. are obtained.
