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Journal of Environmental Waste Management and Recycling | Volume 1

March 05-06, 2018 | London, UK

Recycling & Waste Management

International Conference on

Energy recovery and utilization from waste printed circuit boards

Maria Holuszko

, Amit Kumar

and

Travis Janke

University of British Columbia, Canada

Ronin8 Technologies Ltd, Canada

lectronic waste is one the fastest growing waste streams

in the world and printed circuit boards (PCB) are the most

valuable fraction of this stream due to the presence of gold,

silver, copper, and palladium. Printed circuit boards consist of

approximately 30% metal and 70% non-metals. The non-metal

fraction is composed of 60-65% fiberglass and 35-40% organics,

in the form of surface-mount plastics and epoxy resins in the

printed circuit board laminates. The organics in the non-metal

fraction provide a potential alternative source of energy, but

hazardous flame retardants contained in the epoxy resins and

the presence of residual metals create challenges for utilizing

this material for energy recovery.This research provides an

evaluation regarding the energy content of printed circuit

boards. Density-based separation processes were used to

separate the various components of the boards to increase the

energy content in specific density fraction while reducing the

metal content. The content of the hazardous flame retardants

and residual metals was analyzed to evaluate the harmful effect

of emissions produced from utilizing the non-metal fraction as

an alternative feed stock in waste-to-energy applications.

Speaker Biography

Maria Holuszko has more than 25 years of experience in Mineral and Coal Processing

Engineering working with industry, academia, and government. Her first position

was at the University of Alberta, followed by the Alberta Research Council. In the

1990s she held a senior Licensed Scientist positon at the British Columbia Ministry

of Energy in Victoria, B.C., and she was engaged in consulting work for the mining

industry before she decided to pursue her PhD studies at UBC. After completing her

PhD degree in 2006, she moved to Australia to work at the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral

Research Centre, the center of excellence for mineral processing at the University

of Queensland. In 2011, she returned to work for the industry as a Senior Research

Engineer at Teck Resources until she joined the UBC Mining Engineering department

as Assistant Professor in 2014.