Gold recovery from PCBs with thiosulfate as complexing agent

Waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is the fastest growing advanced type of solid waste streams in the urban environment worldwide and contains interesting amounts of precious metals. Hydrometallurgical technique is fast emerging as preferred process for the recovery of a variety of metals due to its lower energy consume and lower smelter emissions than conventional pyrometallurgical processes. In this work, a hydrometallurgical process for the recovery of gold and silver from electronic scraps was studied. In place of cyanide, thiosulfate was chosen as complexing agent for gold. Thiosulfate leaching can be considered a non-toxic process and the gold dissolution rates can be faster than conventional cyanidation. The electronic scraps, obtained from “end of life” mobile phones, were crushed and pre-treated with nitric acid before the leaching. Different parameters were studied: concentration of thiosulfate, temperature and reaction time. Moreover, the use of ultrasound to assist the hydrometallurgical gold extraction was investigated, as its application in ores leaching shows a greater metals release in shorter time and the advantage of working at lower concentration of reagents and at lower temperature. In this work, the use of ultrasound allowed a higher recovery of the precious metals than conventional leaching in all the conditions studied (different concentrations of reagents, temperature and reaction time). Moreover, the studied process allowed also the recovery of the other metals present in the waste (Cu, Sn and Ag).