From garbage to gold : an alternative for e-waste management

Abstract

In this research project, a practical and viable method to extract precious metal, in particular gold, from the printed circuit boards collected from e-Waste is conducted. The cold electrical contact heads, is added to a reactive substance, which is 97% cocentrated sulphuric acid to corrode all other substances and leave gold as a leftover. The leftover gold pieces is extracted manually after the process with the use of forceps. On the plus side, based on current calculations, only 5,000 litres of sulphuric acid would be required to extract 1 kg of gold, as compared to the current usage of 500,000 litres of aqua regia per kg of gold. However, future research is still needed to testify its efficiency and eco-friendliness.