two-step leaching of motherboards from personal computers (pcs) to recover metals selectively

Electric and electronic waste (e-waste) generation is emerging with a high rate. one piece of e-waste are the pcs including motherboards as their main processing unit. in order to keep up the processing needs, materials of high quality are used to produce them. metals like gold, silver, palladium, platinum, copper, etc. are employed in these boards. recovery of such metallic elements can be of great economic value. in an industrial scale, sulfuric acid and aqua regia are two well-established leaching media for the recycling oh e-waste. this study aims to assess the capability of a combined two-step leaching of these agents to recover metals selectively, with a focus of pgms, au, ag, and cu. the recovery rates of pd, au, ag, and cu by the two-step leaching are 99.57%, 99.68%, 81.51%, and almost 100%, respectively.