Bioleaching of gold, copper and nickel from waste cellular phone PCBs and computer goldfinger motherboards by two <italic>Aspergillus niger</italic>strains
Madrigal-Arias, Jorge EnriqueArgumedo-Delira, RosalbaAlarcón, AlejandroMendoza-López, Ma. RemediosGarcía-Barradas, OscarCruz-Sánchez, Jesús SamuelFerrera-Cerrato, RonaldJiménez-Fernández, Maribel
<p>In an effort to develop alternate techniques to recover metals from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), this research evaluated the bioleaching efficiency of gold (Au), copper (Cu) and nickel (Ni) by two strains of <italic>Aspergillus niger</italic> in the presence of gold-plated finger integrated circuits found in computer motherboards (GFICMs) and cellular phone printed circuit boards (PCBs). These three metals were analyzed for their commercial value and their diverse applications in the industry. Au-bioleaching ranged from 42 to 1% for <italic>Aspergillus niger</italic> strain MXPE6; with the combination of <italic>Aspergillus niger</italic> MXPE6 + <italic>Aspergillus niger</italic> MX7, the Au-bioleaching was 87 and 28% for PCBs and GFICMs, respectively. In contrast, the bioleaching of Cu by <italic>Aspergillus niger</italic> MXPE6 was 24 and 5%; using the combination of both strains, the values were 0.2 and 29% for PCBs and GFICMs, respectively. Fungal Ni-leaching was only found for PCBs, but with no significant differences among treatments. Improvement of the metal recovery efficiency by means of fungal metabolism is also discussed.</p>.
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