High throughput XRF study of electronic components to enable better understanding of the urban mine composition

Our economy is dependent on critical raw materials (CRMs). Waste printed circuit boards (PCBs) are a promising source of such CRMs, but most of them are not recoverable with current industrial recycling practices. A key issue to be addressed is the composition & therefore value, of this urban mine of PCBs to enable stakeholders to build accurate & viable recycling business models. To solve this problem, one need to build a database of the chemical composition of the electronic components (ECs) found in such e-waste. However, full elemental analysis of EC lacks standardization or is proprietary to electronics manufacturers. Therefore, we propose here to demonstrate the feasibility of high-throughput X-ray fluorescence imaging of e-waste ECs using synchrotron radiation to populate such a database. This would allow on-line estimation of waste stream composition & development of sorting strategies leading to outputs that are simpler, less variable, and more concentrated in few target CRMs.