Recovery of precious metals from electronic scraps

Recovery of precious metals (PMs) is a present topic, as they are used almost in every electronicelectric device. Gold is the second PM in order of consumption (following silver) and it is almost ubiquitary in electronics where it mainly finds application to produce bonding wires in integrated circuits and as a coating for contacts and connectors. Given this, discontinued electronic and, with a minor role, electric devices may represent a primary source of PMs as gold mines or jewelery wastes. At present the recovery of gold from such waste is generally accomplished by two strategies: by oxidative thermal treatment followed by metallurgical or chemical processes or by cyanide chemical etching; both techniques do not represent the optimum as the first one deserves a great amount of energy and non-combustible pollutant slag and fumes are produced, while the second procedure comports the use of a highly pollutant agent as cyanide. The aim of this work is the characterization of different electronics scraps to evaluate the gold concentration, and the selective recovery of this metal using enviromentally-friendly techniques. In particular, a new process was developed in order to overcome such environmental and efficiency issues. The process reaches the goal of detach the gold film from the substrate by selective leaching of the supporting metal.