Title: Material recycling of separately collected fractions of municipal waste with metal content

Principal investigator: doc. Ing. Dušan Oráč, PhD.

Summary: The project solves complex recycling of waste electrical and electronic equipment as a significant fraction of municipal waste. In recent years, material recycling has become one of the three main pillars in EU Raw Materials policy. This is also the reason why problematic of municipal waste recycling is important. Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), mainly printed circuits boards (PCBs), are valuable secondary raw material for obtaining non-ferrous metals such as copper, tin and precious metals mainly gold, silver and palladium. Metals are recovered by hydrometallurgical processes usually preceded with mechanical and physical or thermal pretreatment. In order to intensify efficiency of waste treatment multistage processes are applied. Concerning the amount, chemical composition and future recycling of this kind of wastes it is possible to estimate the financial benefit of the industrial application of achieved project results to 3,5 million US $/year.