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The brighter side of e-waste—a rich secondary source of metal

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Abstract

This article details the electronic waste (e-waste) generation, their composition, health, and environment hazards, and legal rules for disposal as well as their significance as a potential secondary source of metals and other components. Moreover, valuable metal extraction technologies from the e-waste are reviewed in general and waste cell phones in particular. E-waste is nowadays preferentially used for recovery of metals mainly from printed circuit boards (PCBs). Different techniques, namely pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, and biohydrometallurgy used for metal extraction from e-waste are swotted. The economic and environmental valuation features of these technologies are also included. Compared to other methods, biohydrometallurgy is the method of choice, as in it natural components like air and water are used, has low operating and maintenance cost, and operate at ambient temperature and pressure. Microbial aspects of metal extraction from e-waste are summarized.

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Funding

This work was supported by Department of Biotechnology (DBT), New Delhi, India (Grant # BT/PR15404/BCE/8/1148/2015)

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  1. Department of Microbiology and Biotechnology, School of Sciences, Gujarat University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, 380 009, India

    Devayani R. Tipre, Bhumika R. Khatri & Shital C. Thacker

  2. Xavier Research Foundation, Loyola Centre for Research and Development, St. Xavier College Campus, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, 380009, India

    Shailesh R. Dave

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BRK is responsible of investigation, literature survey and writing original draft, SCT is responsible of manuscript review and revision, DRT is responsible of supervision, project administration, manuscript review and revision, SRD is responsible for conceptualization, visualization; manuscript review and editing.

All authors have participated in the article preparation. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Tipre, D.R., Khatri, B.R., Thacker, S.C. et al. The brighter side of e-waste—a rich secondary source of metal. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 10503–10518 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-12022-1

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