Recycling Electronic Components By Just Adding Hot Water - The Solution to Electronic Waste?

The obvious expense of computer evolution and the advancement in technology, are electronic wastes. This has inspired scientists from he National Physical Laboratory (NPL), together with  In2Tec Ltd (UK) and Gwent Electronic Materials Ltd. They have developed a special bonding material that can be applied on printed circuit boards (PCB), allowing its component to separate easily by just imersing it into hot water.

How to recycle this printed circuit board: add hot water. The bonding material dissolves away leaving you with 90% of your components to re-use as you wish. (Credit: NPL)

The significantly allows 90% of the original electronic components to be reused. While still able to withstand prolonged thermal cycling and damp heat stressing.

This breakthrough came as part of the ReUSE (Reuseable, Unzippable, Sustainable Electronics) project. Which aims to decrease the volume of electronic wastes and promote to increase the reclability of electronic components.

source: kurzweil