#Industry ·2025-12-10
At 2 a.m., the last subway train leaves the city, and in the recycling bins at the subway station, discarded mobile phones and computer motherboards lie like silent metal fish, awaiting their fate. Few people know that these "urban ores" wrapped in green paint and embedded with gold wires would be a disaster for both resources and the environment if directly sent to incinerators. But if handed over to an intelligent water-based recycling system, they can complete a stunning transformation from "garbage" to "mineral deposits" in the symphony of water and bubbles. The water-based recycling system for waste circuit boards may sound cold at first, but it's actually a river that "mines gold". The entire line operates like a quiet underground river: first, the double-shaft shredder opens its steel teeth to shred the entire board, emitting a low clattering sound; then the hammer mill rotates at high speed to crush the debris into millimeter-sized particles, stripping off the green paint and copper foil in the impact; followed by dual sorting of heavy metals and water - the lightweight resin powder is gently carried away by the water, while the heavy metal particles fall into different collection bins like obedient children. Copper, aluminum, tin, gold, and palladium each find their place, like a carefully choreographed metal ballet. Water is the softest "sieve" on this production line. Unlike the traditional dry crushing method that causes dust to fly everywhere, the water-based system captures the dust before it even rises into the air, ensuring a pharmaceutical-grade air purity in the workshop. In the density sorting tank, copper particles rise against the current like a dark red fish swarm, while resin sand flows down like white fine sand, with a separation purity of up to 98%. More ingeniously, water is not a disposable resource. It is recycled through six-stage sedimentation, flocculation, and filtration before returning to the circulation tank, with each cubic meter of water circulating more than 300 times, truly making "water" no longer "wear away stone", but "carve through boards". At the end of the equipment, the copper chips gleam with a rose gold luster, pressed into neat cubes by automatic packers and awaiting pickup by the smelter; the resin powder turns into black granules and is sent to plastic wood enterprises to become the aggregate for outdoor flooring. A discarded mobile phone motherboard contains about 0.18 grams of gold, 13 grams of copper, and 7 grams of aluminum. After passing through the water-based recycling line, the metal recovery rate exceeds 95%, equivalent to moving a 1.5-ton gold-rich ore mine into the city. Some have calculated that if all 1.2 million tons of waste circuit boards produced annually in China were processed using water-based recycling systems, it could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 2.8 million tons, equivalent to planting 150 million tamarisk trees. However, the story of technology goes beyond numbers. In Kunming, Yunnan, a small workshop that once relied on burning to extract copper was shut down due to pollution. Li Zhenguo, the owner, introduced the water-based recycling line with a try-it-out mindset. Three months later, he shed the label of "major polluter" and hung a bronze plaque for "resource recycling demonstration enterprise" at the entrance of his workshop; employees took off their gas masks and donned white overalls, inspecting touch screens in air-conditioned rooms. "We used to live off our descendants' inheritance," Li Zhenguo said. "But now we've finally earned our own bread." With these words, he captured the warmth of technology's benevolence. As night falls, the equipment enters automatic cleaning mode, and the water under LED lights glows a soft blue, like a quiet Milky Way. Once seen as the "end" of electronic waste, the waste circuit boards now become the "start" of urban mining in the embrace of the water-based recycling system. When the last copper particle rolls into the material warehouse, the machine gently emits a "drop -" prompt sound, as if saying to the city: Don't be afraid of old things piling up. As long as we give them a river, we can make metals shine again and let the earth breathe easily.
2025-12-10
2025-12-10
2025-12-10
2025-12-09
2025-12-09
2025-12-09
No. 15 Industrial Avenue, Industrial Park, Shicheng County, Jiangxi Province
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