Techno-economic potential of recycling Tantalum containing capacitors by automated selective dismantling

Because of the low concentrations of Tantalum on printed wiring boards, today it is not economically viable to recycle Tantalum in pyro- and hydrometallurgical processes. However, in case the Tantalum can be up concentrated, the recycling of the Tantalum can become economically viable in the multi-stage process used to refine Tantalum from ores. Therefore, the presented research investigates the techno-economic potential of selectively removing Tantalum capacitors from PWBs prior to treating the complete PWBs in integrated precious metal smelting and refining installations. In the presented research the economic potential is analysed using return on investment analysis for automated selective dismantling and the viability of manual selective dismantling. These analyses are based on the measured metal concentration of Tantalum capacitors, the composition of a typical PWB and the results of lab experiments for the removal and detection of components using deep learning computer vision.

Publication year:2020