Nickel Extraction from Waste Etching Liquor from Electronic Lead Frame Manufacturing

Abstract

Acidic concentrated ferric chloride solution is used as an etching solution in the etching process during the manufacture of electronic lead frames. After etching, there are several metal contaminates in the waste etching solution. Nickel is the main contaminant. Precipitation is currently used to remove Ni in order to recycle the etching solution. Since Ni cannot be removed completely by precipitation, the etching efficiency decreases with Ni accumulation. In this work, the recovery of Ni from used etching solution by solvent extraction with 2-ethylhexanal oxime (EHO) was found that with solvent extraction alone, Ni and Cu recovery were 77.8% and 93.6% respectively, with 1.5 M EHO and 30 min extraction time. With precipitation and solvent extraction, Ni and Cu were extracted nearly 100% with 0.3 M EHO. Complete extraction can be obtained 2 stage countercurrent extractions.