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Optimizing the thiosulfate leaching of gold from printed circuit boards of discarded mobile phone

IR@NML: CSIR-National Metallurgical Laboratory, Jamshedpur

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Title Optimizing the thiosulfate leaching of gold from printed circuit boards of discarded mobile phone
 
Creator Hung Ha, Vinh
Lee, Jae-chun
Huyunh, Trung Hai
Jeong, Jinki
Pandey, B D
 
Subject Metallurgy
Extractive Metallurgy
 
Description An environmentally benign process involving thiosulfate leaching was developed in order to recover gold from the printed circuit boards (PCBs) of discarded mobile phone. The effect of concentration of the reagents such as thiosulfate, copper(II) and ammonia on the leaching of gold was investigated in the temperature range 20–50 °C. Parameters were optimized through modeling of the leaching process using response surface methodology (RSM) based on central composite design (CCD). The optimum conditions for leaching of gold from PCBs were identified to be 72.71 mM thiosulfate, 10.0 mM copper(II) and 0.266 M ammonia. The initial rate of gold leaching was found to be 2.395 × 10− 5 mol∙m− 2∙ s− 1 under the optimum conditions. As regards the kinetics of gold leaching, the pseudo-second order kinetic model with chemical control was found to be applicable in the low concentration range (40–60 mM thiosulfate, 5–7 mM copper(II) and 0.22–0.247 M ammonia), compared to that of pseudo-first order kinetic model at mid concentration range of the reactants viz., 60–70 mM thiosulfate, 7–9 mM copper(II) and 0.247–0.263 M ammonia. The apparent activation energy of the reaction in the temperature range 20–50 °C was found to be 78.6 kJ∙mol− 1. The samples were characterized before and after leaching using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) which corroborated the chemical controlled leaching mechanism.
 
Publisher Elsevier
 
Date 2014-10
 
Type Article
PeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://eprints.nmlindia.org/7014/1/Vinh_Hung_Ha-2014.pdf
Hung Ha, Vinh and Lee, Jae-chun and Huyunh, Trung Hai and Jeong, Jinki and Pandey, B D (2014) Optimizing the thiosulfate leaching of gold from printed circuit boards of discarded mobile phone. Hydrometallurgy, 149 (IF-2.224). pp. 118-126.
 
Relation http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304386X14001649
http://eprints.nmlindia.org/7014/