Microbial Leaching of Copper from Waste Electronic Scraps

Microbial leaching was used to mobilize copper from two kinds of waste electronic scraps used as raw materials for printed wire boards. Both of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans and Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans used to solubilize copper from the samples. The experimental results demonstrated that the percentages of copper basically increased with decrease of sieve fraction of the samples. The green non-conductive coating of the waste electronic scraps was proved to have little effect on the leaching efficiency of both of the pure culture of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans and Acidithiobacil thiooxidans or their mixed culture. Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans has larger solubilizing capability for copper than Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans.