Bioleaching of Electronic Waste: A Review

In recent years the market demand for electronic instruments with attention to their low life time is increasing rapidly which create a new environmental challenge. E-waste contains a vast range of hazardous metals which an improper management can threat human society seriously. On the other hand on average e-waste can supply about 40 million ton of materials. But the complex and non heterogeneous nature of this waste was the main barrier for recycling. Traditional methods are highly cost and produce hazardous intermediate material. Bioleaching is environmental-friendly and economical for recovery of metals from e-waste by using microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi. In this article, previous articles about bioleaching of e-waste are studied. The result showed bioleaching is an effective method for metal extraction from e-waste. Some base metals as like as Cu, Ni, and Zn were extracted totally and Au, a stable metal, can recovered about 50%.