A new joint venture has been launched to recover tin and other metals from waste circuit boards. The joint venture company, dubbed Itrime, is a partnership between ITRI Innovation (a subsidiary of ITRI, the international tin industry organisation) and its partner, Ultromex.
ITRI Innovation has experience of tin-based technologies and Ultromex brings together expertise in plant construction, design, and novel processes for recovering both base and precious metals from all types of substrate and matrices.
A low cost, low energy technology for rapid removal of metals for final recovery from circuit board waste is being developed, enabling efficient recovery of tin, copper, lead, silver and other precious metals. A pilot plant is under construction in the Wirral, and will be operational within three months.
David Bishop, MD of ITRI, commented, “Pressure to recover metals efficiently from waste electronics scrap is growing with increasing commodity prices and constrained supplies. At the same time new regulations such as the revised WEEE Directive in Europe will mandate increasing targets for waste electronics collection. We believe this technology represents a significant advancement in metals recycling.”
Once proven at pilot plant scale, the technology will be licensed globally. Discussions are already well advanced with a number of interested parties. Itrimex will offer licensees the option of including the design, build and commissioning of plants as part of any agreement. It will also retain the capability to process scrap printed circuit boards on behalf of customers.
Jonathan Quinn, MD of Ultromex, added, “The Itrimex process extracts metals at high concentrations and recoveries, ensuring that maximum returns are achieved from the final refining stage. It is simple and cost effective and can treat any grade and type of scrap boards (low, medium and high grade).”
