Electronic Waste-A Journey from Global Menace to Wealth Generation by its Effective Management Strategy Kumari Rajni1, Karthaka Prerna Prashant2, Rajan Anand Prem3,* 1Department of Biomedical Science, School of Biosciences and Technology, VIT, Vellore-632014, Tamil Nadu, India 2Department of Biotechnology, School of Biosciences and Technology, VIT, Vellore-632014, Tamil Nadu, India 3Department of Biomedical Science, School of Biosciences and Technology, Research Officer-Renewable Energy in CO2 and Green Technology Centre, VIT, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India *Corresponding Author E-mail: aprdbt@gmail.com, janandpremrajan@vit.ac.in
Online published on 18 April, 2019. Abstract Electronic waste is expected to rise up to 300% by the year 2020. Developing country like India, produces around 11, 000-15, 000 tone of E-waste annually. E-waste not only causes serious health hazards but also deleterious long lasting environmental effects due to xenobiotic and heavy metal integrated in it. E-waste also has various economically useful metals like copper, aluminium, steel, gold, silver, and platinum. Lack of technology to harness these beneficial metals lead to the export of E-waste from developing countries to Singapore, Belgium and Japan for its processing, which indicates beyond doubt that the major economic driver for recycling of electronic waste is from the recovery of precious metals. The void in judicial management and latest development in metal recovery from E-waste has been bridge by this review. The industrial and feasible processes involved in metal recovery are Pyrometallurgical methods, Hydrometallurgical methods (Acid leaching, Cyanide leaching, Thiourea leaching and Thiosulfate leaching), Biometallurgy Process, Bacterial leaching (Direct mechanism and Indirect mechanism by Thiosulphate Pathway and Polysulfide pathway) and Fungal leaching are elaborated in this review. In nutshell, we conclude that E-waste is inevitable evil. All research should lead to the practical solution for a problem hence, we have done critical analysis in pros and cons of existing E-waste management and propose two effective methods to manage E-waste, first is effective recycling (disassembly, upgrading and refining) and second is bioleaching using various microbes such as Acidithiobacillus sp. Top Keywords E-waste, Health hazard, Metal recovery, Recycling, Bioleaching. Top |