title: Electrostatic separation for recovering metals and nonmetals from waste printed circuit board: problems and improvements.
abstract: Electrostatic separation is an effective and environmentally friendly method for recycling comminuted waste printed circuit boards (PCB). As a classical separator, the roll-type corona-electrostatic separator (RTS) has some advantages in this field. However, there are still some notable problems, such as the middling products and their further treatment, impurity of nonconductive products because of the aggregation of fine particles, and stability of the separation process and balance between the production capacity and the separation quality. To overcome these problems, a conception of two-step separation is presented, and a new two-roll type corona-electrostatic separator (T-RTS) was built As compared to RTS, the conductive products increase by 8.9%, the middling products decrease by 45%, and the production capacity increases by 50% in treating comminuted PCB wastes by T-RTS. In addition, the separation process in T-RTS is more stable. Therefore, T-RTS is a promising separator for recycling comminuted PCB.
authors.affiliation: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Jiang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Zhenming
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xu