Brazil is the second largest producer of electronic waste in the Americas, with a production that grows each year and only 10% of it being treated in its own way. Additionally, given the typical chemical composition of this type of residue, it can be possible to recover valuable metals, such as copper, gold, silver, and platinum. Presently, Brazil does not have an industrial plant devoted to such extractive activity using electronic waste, with most of its treatment carried out abroad. The research hypothesis of this manuscript is that universities and their communities could develop sources of raw materials for such extraction processes and, therefore, deserve attention for the creation of collection points and partnerships. In this context, there is a need to understand this community behavior regarding the acquisition, storage, and disposal of electronic equipment, as well as information about topics related to electronic waste management and recycling. To implement such a study for the higher education community in Rio de Janeiro, a form was created covering several topics on the subject, which was disseminated among the teachers, students, employees, and family members of two main state universities. It was determined that the studied group has more than 16.96 million mobile phones in hibernation, in addition to other equipment, with an estimated stockpile value of USD 67.45 million for the studied group in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro. If extrapolated to all of Brazil, this could be as high as USD 797.50 million for the studied group. This information will be used in future projects to assess the economic potential of an industrial plant dedicated to metal recovery in Brazil. However, the present study also identified an important lack of knowledge regarding proper waste disposal and solid waste policies among this well-educated group. It became clear that without appropriate information regarding collection points and knowledge on how to deal with obsolete devices, the access to this source of raw material could be a hinderance to future extraction projects in the area.

With a generation of more than 2 million metric tons per year, Brazil is the largest producer of waste electrical and electronic equipment in Latin America. However, Brazil does not have its own way for treating printed circuit boards, a key component present in this type of waste. In this context, the processing of these components would allow the extraction of metals with high added value, mainly copper, silver, gold, and palladium. The purpose of this research is to design a conceptual treatment route, based on the integration of technologies described in the literature. After creating the route design, a mass and energy balances were performed, considering two printed circuit board source as raw material: (Case A) Wasted equipment in general; (Case B) Using only cell phones. For both cases, the treatment of 2 t·h⁻¹ was considered. In addition, cost estimates and plant sensitivity analysis were carried out. For 15 years of plant production, the calculated Capex was USD 2,002,682, where an internal return rate of 140.1% and 3933.0% was obtained for Case A and B, respectively, and a net present value of USD 44,403,373 and USD 3,210,393,496 for Case A and B, respectively. Additionally, it was observed that Case A has a great sensitivity to the variation of the processing volume. Based on the present findings, this theoretical research has the potential to be a nucleation point in the design of a future industrial plant dedicated to the recycling of printed circuit boards, as well as to understand the key variables for the processing these components, based on Brazilian circumstances. Additionally, the project presents the hypothetical investment required for the creation of such conceptual plant, which is a crucial piece of information for potential investors.

The production of electronic waste due to technological development, economic growth and increasing population has been rising fast, pushing for solutions before the environmental pressure achieves unprecedented levels. Recently, it was observed that many extractive metallurgy alternatives had been considered to recover value from this type of waste. Regarding pyrometallurgy, little is known about the low-temperature processing applied before fragmentation and subsequent component separation. Therefore, the present manuscript studies such alternative based on scanning electron microscopy characterization. The sample used in the study was supplied by a local recycling center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The mass loss was constant at around 30% for temperatures higher than 300 °C. Based on this fact, the waste material was then submitted to low-temperature processing at 350 °C followed by attrition disassembling, size classification, and magnetic concentration steps. In the end, this first report of the project shows that 15% of the sample was recovered with metallic components with high economic value, such as Cu, Ni, and Au, indicating that such methods could be an interesting alternative to be explored in the future for the development of alternative electronic waste extraction routes.