Metal

Computer hardware

Wastewater

Linguistics

Engineering

Philosophy

Metallurgy

Materials science

Electronic equipment

Telecommunications

Computer science

Waste management

Smart phone

Resource recovery

Mobile phone

Precious metal

Process engineering

Electronic waste

Environmental science

Phone

ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering

Electronic waste (e-waste) is one of the fastest growing waste streams around the world, and waste mobile phones contribute a major portion of this waste, in terms of the number of units. Thus, in order to fully discover the constituent materials and systematically evaluate the recovery potentials for waste mobile phones, we dismantled 20 waste mobile phones, manufactured between 2001 and 2015, into 7 main parts. We wanted to determine all the valuable materials and precious metals in these devices and to compare the differences between cellular and smart phones. The results show that cellular phones were evolving into smaller sizes between 2001 and 2012, while the smart phones were becoming higher in mass between 2006 and 2015. The composition analysis showed that a smart phone typically contained approximately 260 various metallic and nonmetallic parts, while a cell phone contained about 150. The experimental analysis of precious metals in waste mobile phones indicated that one kg of cellular phones contained approximately 1,600 mg of silver, 186.5 mg of gold, and 36.9 mg of palladium (on average) and about 1,732.9 mg of silver, 190.9 mg of gold, and 40.1 mg of palladium (on average) were contained in one kg of smart phones. The information obtained in this study shows that waste mobile phones could constitute a potential new resource for the sustainable secondary mining of rare and precious metals.

Characterizing the Materials Composition and Recovery Potential from Waste Mobile Phones: A Comparative Evaluation of Cellular and Smart Phones