Recycling of printed circuit boards by abrasive waterjet cutting

Abstract The rapid growth of waste printed circuit boards (PCBs) necessitates development of compatible treatment techniques. In this study, abrasive waterjet (AWJ) cutting technology was utilized to crush waste PCBs for the first time. Cutting experiments were mainly performed on waste mobile mainboard, random access memory (RAM), universal circuit board (UCB), and central processing unit (CPU). The results demonstrated that AWJ cutting was capable of breaking waste UCB (∼ 14 mm thick) into small particles (