Recovery of Indium from Mobile Phone Touch Screen Using Adapted Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans

Abstract

Abstract:The toxicity of heavy metals has important role in thermophilic microorganism growth in bioleaching of e-waste. The mobile phone touch screen has high concentration of several heavy metals that caused negative effect on bacterial activity and metals recovery. In the present investigation, Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans was adapted to powder of mobile phone touch screen. The serial subculturing approach was used for bacterial adaptation with heavy metals. The experiments began with 0.1 wt/vol.% pulp density eventually increase to 2.5 wt/vol.%. All experiment conducted in 100 ml 9k medium at the initial pH 2 and 2% (v/v) inoculums. The effective parameters such as pH, Eh, Fe 3+ , cell concentration were studied and the results confirmed as well as each other. Indium recovery for adapted cell, non-adapted cell and control were 100% (adapted) , 10% (non-adapted) , 1% (control) , respectively. Finally, it is essential that the bacteria become adapted with the heavy metals and consequently an acceptable bioleaching process will be achieved.

LCD panels bioleaching with pure and mixed culture of Acidithiobacillus

“…Our research concerns the influence of pulp density due to the importance of this factor. It is known that increasing the pulp density in the bacterial leaching process inhibits the kinetics and rate of metal extraction (Rezaei et al, 2018;Valix, 2017;Brandl et al, 2001). The results obtained so far clearly indicate that the high bio-recovery efficiency of In was obtained by using a pulp density in the range of 1-1.6% (w/v) (Jowkar et al, 2018;Rezaei et al, 2018, Xie et al, 2019.…”

“…They can obtain the oxidizing energy both reduced sulfur compounds and the ferrous ion. There is an increasing amount of new results on the utilization of acidophilic microorganisms in the bioleaching of various types of metal-bearing wastes (Printed Circuit Boards -PCBs, Ni-Cd batteries, Li-ion batteries, spent refinery catalysts) with high efficiency of metals bioleaching (> 90%) (Sedlakova-Kadukova et al, 2017;Willner and Fornalczyk, 2013;Nagar et al, 2021), including valuable In extraction from LCD (Willner et al, 2018;Jowkar et al, 2018;Xie et al, 2019;Rezaei et al, 2018).…”

“…It was also found that 100% efficiency was achieved when adapted A. ferrooxidans (LCD density 2.5% w/v, 10 days) was used, however Xie et al found that they did not obtain any leaching of indium in the presence of A. ferrooxidans. In systems with non-adapted A. ferrooxidans bacteria, their growth was stopped (due to the toxicity of the LCD powder) and the recovery of indium did not exceed 10% (Rezaei et al, 2018). Adaptation is a key factor in ensuring the effectiveness of indium leaching, however, reports by various authors indicate that high efficiency was obtained both in the presence of pure bacteria that derive energy from the biooxidation of inorganic compounds containing reduced S as well as Fe 2+ .…”

“…Previous literature analysing the possibility of recovering metals from LCD material using bacterial leaching is significantly limited. The works relating to bioleaching (Jowkar et al, 2018;Rezaei et al, 2018, Xie et al, 2019 did not take into account the presence of tin, which in 10% as SnO2 is a component of ITO (another 90% is In2O3) in the LCD material. Jowkar et al focused on the recovery In and Sr from LCD screen sources from laptops, where Sr constituted 0.2% of the material.…”

“…Jowkar et al focused on the recovery In and Sr from LCD screen sources from laptops, where Sr constituted 0.2% of the material. Other researchers (Rezaei et al, 2018, Xie et al, 2019 analysed only the possibility of In recovery. There is therefore no publications for Sn, bound in the ITO material with In.…”