Printed circuit boards: its characteristics and its potential for recycling | Placas de circuito impresso: suas características e seu potencial de reciclagem.

• Main Authors: Tássia Camila Gonçalves dos Santos, Elizabete Buonora de Souza Lira, Alex Souza Moraes
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco 2016-10-01
• Series: Revista Geama
• Subjects: equipments electronics; métaux lourds; computers
• Online Access: http://www.journals.ufrpe.br/index.php/geama/article/view/973

The changes happened in recent decades have allowed technological advances invade our daily lives and significantly increase the consumption of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE). With the life cycle reduced increasingly the related products have been calling attention to an environmental problem, characterized by increasing the volume of such waste, intensified by improper discard. This paper has for aim to study the components of the printed circuit board (PCB) considering the heavy metals that compose it, its damages to the environment and man. The PCIs have an average of seventeen metals, highlighting the precious metals that can be used recycling methods. Among the forms of recycling the mechanical process is form less aggressive to the environment and to humans by producing less pollutant wastes. Environmental perspective recycling of printed circuit boards is an important option to reduce the extraction of natural resources, but the informal recycling carried out by associations of collectors, often do not have any kind of assistance or supervision.