Working in Partnership with Lancaster University

Due to the rapid advances in technology the amount of waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) is growing.

In fact E-waste (electronic equipment waste) is the most rapidly growing waste stream in the world, with over 50 million tonnes generated globally each year.

Informal waste management methods consist of open burning of the waste resulting in the release of toxic fumes.  These can penetrate the local environment and food and water sources with long reaching consequences.

Formal recycling methods are often not much better with large shipping distances to plants where they are incinerated to regard only part of the contained metal.  This obviously contributes to a higher carbon footprint.

Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are important and key components of electronic and electrical equipment, that generally consist of heavy metals, fiberglass, ceramics, and polymers.

Waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs) are the main component of WEEE, accounting for about 3 wt. %, they contain a large collection of elements and are often referred to as “urban” mines.

This is because by weight, roughly a third of WPCBs are metals, approximately 16% copper, 4% tin, 3% iron, 2% nickel and 1% zinc.

More notably the content of precious metals in WPCBs, such as gold, silver and palladium, which are used as contacts or plating layers due to their high chemical stability, longevity and electric conductivity, can be as much as 17 times greater than is found in their natural ore.

However, PCBs also contain a number of hazardous metals or minerals dangerous to both the environment and human health.

Working in partnership with Lancaster University, ICT Reverse has developed a process to cover both base and precious metals from E-waste that does not involve incineration or large quantities of chemicals and strong acids.

In their place a softer, sustainable approach has been taken. The process utilises pre-existing microorganisms discoverable in nature to conduct Bioleaching to remove the desirable metals.

The employed technique allows recovery and refinement of target metals without the toxic fume release or high energy intensive procedures of conventional methods.  This in turn reduces both the carbon footprint of the process and enabling in house recovery of the valuable elements further cementing ICT Reverse’s zero landfill commitments.