Gold recovery from waste solutions of PCBs gold plating process using hydro cyclone reactor for demonstration study

Abstract

This paper presents a novel methodology to recover gold from waste solutions of printed circuit boards (PCBs) generated during the gold electro-plating. Studies have been carried out using two different sizes of hydrocyclone (357.00 and 381.87 mm height) at various parameters such as current, flow rate, electrolyte concentration, cathode materials, and anodic area to recover the gold. ~96% gold was recovered using short-cone type hydrocyclone (357.00 mm) at following conditions: applied current 51.3 A/m2, flow rate 7.7 m/s, using stainless steel as cathode material. However, approximately same amount of gold can be also recovered with long-cone type hydrocyclone (381.87 mm). But, the possibility for damage of long-cone type hydrocyclone might be higher than short cone type hydrocyclone because reaction occurs only at small reaction surface area during gold recovery. Therefore, short-cone type hydrocyclone has been considered for further study to recover gold.