Recovery of critical metals from e-waste and lithium battery waste

Constantly innovating and developing technology has greatly shortened the life cycle of electrical and electronic products. At the same time, rapid market development and planned obsolescence have led people to have higher requirements and demand for electronic devices. This has resulted in a huge amount of waste electrical and electronic products. Due to the limited resources needed to produce these products and the changing supply and demand balances and sometimes supply and sometimes price fluctuations, the need to create alternative raw material sources has emerged. These resources, called secondary resources, have started to play an important role both to address environmental concerns and to meet demand. Considering today's economic and production technology trends, it has become necessary to adapt to new approaches developed with circular economy, green production and environmental concerns. R&D activities, which are one of the important stages of the ring that needs to be formed between the final product and its raw material, is a development process that will never lose its importance. In this process, it is important to create alternative methods by making future projections and to implement these methods on an industrial scale over time and to be flexible applications that can respond to developing needs. In this study, biohydrometallurgical processes were carried out simultaneously, the recycling and recovery possibilities of waste printed circuit boards, which contain the most valuable parts of e-waste, and lithium ion batteries, which enter a rapid waste cycle, as secondary resources were examined. As a result of this study, that are more efficient and industrially applicable than the ongoing methods, in accordance with today's competitive conditions, minimizing environmental impact and increasing economic contributions. Li, Co, Ni and Mg recoveries from waste lithium ion batteries were 81%, 75%, 93% and 72% at 0.5% pulp density after one-stage bioprocessing at pilot scale with acidophilic mixed cultures, while Cu 92% and Zn 99% metal recoveries were achieved in waste printed circuit boards after bioprocessing with acidophilic cultures adapted from previous experiments with pre-physical treatments (size reduction and washing).