Intelligent disassembly of components from printed circuit boards to enable re-use and more efficient recovery of critical metals

Based on previous experiences in intelligent disassembly of components from printed circuit boards our goal was to develop an economic solution for reducing the amount of material for the later hydrometallurgical recovery process and to recognize reusable parts on printed circuit boards. Usually the hydrometallurgical recovery process is very time consuming and therefore the recovery rate still relatively low. Therefore it is beneficial to enrich the content of critical metals in the input fraction by extracting only those components from printed circuit boards that are rich in the target metals (e.g. tantalum, rare earth, platinum group metals).