Bioleaching of gold and copper from waste mobile phone PCBs by using a cyanogenic bacterium
Chromobacterium violaceum (C. violaceum), a cyanide generating bacterium has been used to leach out gold and copper from the waste mobile phone printed circuit boards (PCBs) containing ~34.5% Cu and 0.025% Au in YP (yeast extract and polypeptone with glycine) medium. The bioleaching was carried out...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Conference Paper |
| Published: |
na
2011
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/66300 |
| Summary: | Chromobacterium violaceum (C. violaceum), a cyanide generating bacterium has been used to leach out gold and copper from the waste mobile phone printed circuit boards (PCBs) containing ~34.5% Cu and 0.025% Au in YP (yeast extract and polypeptone with glycine) medium. The bioleaching was carried out in an incubator shaker (150 rpm) at 30 °C and 15 g/L pulp density in the pH range 8-11. Dissolution of gold and copper increased from 7.78% (0.225 ppm) to 10.8% (0.46 ppm) and 4.9% (419 ppm) to 11.4% (879 ppm) in 8 days with increase in pH from 8 to 11 and 8 to 10 respectively. Supplementing oxygen with 0.004% (v/v) H 2 O 2 increased the copper leaching to 24.6% (1743 ppm) at pH 10 in 8 days whereas improvement in gold leaching was insignificant with the recovery of 11.31% Au at pH 11.0. The waste PCBs can thus be recycled in environmental friendly manner. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. |
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