Investigation of the Recovery of Gold from Cell Phone Scraps by L-Valine Amino Acid

The printed circuit boards of mobile phones contain precious metals such as gold, platinum, and palladium, with 542, 30, and 26 ppm, respectively, and among the available base metals, copper constitutes the highest weight percentage (30.675%). Therefore, the recycling of this waste is very important not only from an environmental point of view but also from an economic point of view. the leaching operation, was performed, on the original sample printed circuit boards of mobile phones and cakes obtained from leaching with sulfuric acid by the amino acid L-valine and the effect of parameters such as L-valine concentration, temperature, pH, time, the oxidizing amount, the pulp density on the gold recovery was investigated and compared. The results showed that the parameters of temperature, leaching time, pH, relative to pulp density, L-valine concentration, and the amount of oxidant are more important in gold recovery, respectively. Recovery of gold leaching with L-valine amino acid under optimal conditions of L-valine concentration of 200 g/t, temperature 80 °C, pulp density 10%, oxidizing amount of 50 ml/l, pH 11.5, and leaching time 32 hours on the original sample and the cake obtained from leaching with sulfuric acid were 62.23% and 87.34%, respectively. In other words, by acid leaching with sulfuric acid before leaching with amino acid L-valine, the recovery of gold leaching by L-valine increases by about 25.11%.