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Pretreatment of low-grade shredded dust e-waste to enhance silver recovery through biocyanidation by Pseudomonas balearica SAE1

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Abstract

Shredded dust originated during mechanical dismantling of waste electrical and electronic equipments (WEEEs) is enriched source of some valuable metals which might be lost as unworthy waste. Composition analysis of shredded dust printed circuit boards (PCBs) revealed the presence of 12.75 mg g−1  copper (Cu) and 10.34 mg g−1 silver (Ag) along with some other metals (Fe, Ni, and Au). Low concentration of precious metal, such as gold (Au i.e., 0.04 mg g−1) classified this shredded dust as low-grade scrap. Despite low concentration of Au this e-waste can be considered as potential “secondary ore” to recover other valuable metals like Ag. To improve the efficiency of Ag bioleaching using Pseudomonas balearica SAE1, pretreatment of e-waste was done using cost-effective ferric chloride (FeCl3) chemical lixiviant. The concentration of FeCl3 lixiviant was optimized to recover Cu metal prior to bioleaching process. Bioleaching of Ag was done under optimized conditions by Pseudomonas balearica SAE1 using 100 mL Luria Broth (LB) medium, 5 g L−1 glycine, pH 9, temperature 30 °C and 150 rpm. 95% Cu was recovered with 1% FeCl3 prior to bioleaching. Ag solubilization was increased for treated e-waste (36%) as compared to untreated e-waste PCBs (25%). Prerecovery of Cu enhanced Ag bioleaching, as available cyanide was utilized by Ag metal. Therefore, this study provides an economical hybrid method to enhance retrieval of precious metal (Ag) by Pseudomonas balearica SAE1 with economic and ecofriendly redox lixiviant even from low-grade e-scrap.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Jaypee University of Information Technology Waknaghat, Solan for providing  scholarship to PT and all lab facilities. The authors are also thankful to Dr. Anil Kumar for depositing Pseudomonas balearicae SAE1 strain in the JUIT depository for further research work.

Funding

No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Jaypee University of Information Technology, Waknaghat, Solan, Himachal Pradesh, 173234, India

    Pooja Thakur & Sudhir Kumar

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  1. Pooja Thakur
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  2. Sudhir Kumar
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Contributions

Conceptualization: SK; Methodology: SK and PT; Formal analysis and investigation: SK and PT; Writing—original draft preparation: PT; Writing—review and editing: SK and PT; Supervision: SK.

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Correspondence to Sudhir Kumar.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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We declare that there are no ethical issues for human or animal rights in the work presented here.

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Thakur, P., Kumar, S. Pretreatment of low-grade shredded dust e-waste to enhance silver recovery through biocyanidation by Pseudomonas balearica SAE1. 3 Biotech 11, 454 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-021-02977-4

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