PRECIOUS METALS RECOVERED BY URBAN MINING

Abstract

The circular economy generates major environmental benefits, which result from the use of energy and renewable materials or from reuse and recycling. Being a complex mixture of materials and components, from an economic point of view, the separate collection and recycling of electronic and electric wastes can be cost-effective for products because they contain many hazardous substances, rare or precious metals. This paper presents some aspects regarding the waste with high content of precious or nonferrous metals contained in the electronic/electrical components. Their presence in electronic/electrical waste makes it necessary to recycle and treat them in an ecological way, generating a true industrial symbiosis. In the paper this fact is exemplified by the presentation of a reconditioning-recovery technology that allows the full recovery of all components of some types of electrical contacts widely used in economics. Disposable or defective electrical contact waste was used, as well as technological waste resulting from the manufacture of electrical contact pieces.