Relevance

Our growing reliance on technology has led to a significant increase in electronic waste (e-waste), culminating in 53.6 million tonnes in 2019, and heightened demand for metals that are essential for human development, projected to increase 2–6-fold in the next century (Forti et al., 2020; Watari et al., 2021). This situation underscores the urgent need for effective e-waste recycling methods and a way to recover valuable metals. Traditional recycling techniques are not sustainable, often requiring excessive energy and resources. To solve this problem, this project established a scalable, effective, and sustainable process to obtain valuable metals from printed circuit boards (PCBs), a valuable type of e-waste, through hydrometallurgical and mechanical processes.