Within the large variety of materials and components included in electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), in this project (Recovery of scarce and valuable Metals from e-Waste by means of tailor-made adsorbent materials), we specially focus on a specific fraction, the so-called printed circuit boards (PCB). They account for an estimated 3-5 wt.% of e-waste, and are made up of more than 30% by weight of different metal elements, distributed in form of metal layers, joining materials, complex mixtures of metals and multielement alloys.

More specifically, the main proposal of this research is the efficient copper, precious metals (gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, selected for their high value), and critical metals (antimony, considered as a feasibility model of recovery of elements other than noble and transition metals) uptake from the PCB lixiviates produced using novel adsorbents designed for this task, and the following recovery of metals adsorbed, evaluating their re-usability, applying adsorption-desorption cycles.

The two proposed tailor-made classes of materials are hierarchically porous multifunctional activated carbons obtained by using polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-based block copolymers (BCs) as precursors, and functional porous organic polymers (POPs).

The work packages of the project are detailed in the Scheme.