Waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs)
contain certain amounts of
valuable metals such as gold, and so recycling the gold from WPCBs
is necessary. Based on our previous study, gold can be selectively
leached in a NaClO3–NaCl–H2SO4 system. But the highest leaching rate of gold was identified
as approximately 92.8%, and it was difficult to achieve higher rates
by controlling the conditions of temperature, time, and concentrations
of H2SO4, NaCl, and NaClO3. This
reveals that the leaching behavior of gold in the chlorination process
is the key to improve the gold leaching rate. Hence, the leaching
behaviors of gold at different concentrations of NaClO3, NaCl, and H2SO4 were evaluated in this study.
The results showed that (1) the concentrations of NaCl and H2SO4 had no significant effect on the forms of the complex
species of gold; (2) the dissolution and passivation of gold proceeded
in parallel with increasing the potential of the solution; (3) O2 was inevitably produced in the present reaction, leading
to the passivation of gold; and (4) the passivation product was identified
as Au(OH)3. The results presented in this paper provided
a theoretical reference for recycling gold by the chloride method
and promoted the development of chlorination technology.