Potential recovery of precious metals from waste laptops in Jordan

摘要

To achieve a sustainable development in the electronic and electrical equipment(EEE) industry, it is necessary to protect the available natural resources.In addition, to satisfy the increasing demand on EEE, it is necessary to provide alternative sources of raw materials.In this paper, laptops were imported to Jordan in 2011 as an example to show the potential recovery of metals and precious metals from high grade waste electronic and electrical equipment by conducting a mass flow rate analysis using the STAN program.The results show that considerable amounts of gold, silver, cobalt, palladium,and copper could be recovered.This will reduce the amounts needed from primary natural resources and offset the CO2 emissions produced from mining the primary raw material resources.