Hydrometallurgical processing of waste integrated circuits (ICs) to recover Ag and generate mix concentrate of Au, Pd and Pt

Abstract Present research reports a novel and feasible process to recover Ag and generate concentrate of precious metals (Au, Pd and Pt) from waste ICs present in PCBs of computers. Initially, depopulated ICs were pulverized and beneficiated to obtain metallic concentrate, which contained (per ton) 7 Kg Ag, 5 Kg Au, 110 g Pd and 4 g Pt along with Cu, Pb, Fe and Ni. Leaching was carried out and found that at optimized condition i.e. 3 M HNO3, temperature 80 °C, pulp density 50 g/L and mixing time 1 h,