Recycling and reusing electronic components could be made much easier with a new polymer that produces a circuit board that will dissolve when immersed in hot water. The circuit board was developed by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) as part of the ReUSE (Reuseable, Unzippable, Sustainable Electronics) project.
The circuit board material is hardy enough to withstand ordinary heat and moisture, but full immersion in hot water acts to release the components from the board. This allows for over 90% of the electronics materials to be recovered, whereas typically less than 2% of the materials on a circuit board are re-used.
Although this is not necessarily beneficial for the repairability of electronics, it could be a definite improvement in helping get a handle on the growing mountains of electronics waste and make recycling of electronics components and recovery of minerals an easier process.
Video link: YouTube
image: CC BY-SA 1.0 by Mark Pellegrini/Wikimedia
via: Treehugger
http://www.ecogeek.org/computing-and-gadgets/3825-dissolving-circuit-boards-for-easier-electronics-r
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