Simultaneous recovery of high-purity copper and polyvinyl chloride from thin electric cables by plasticizer extraction and ball milling

Herein, we introduce a combination of plasticizer extraction from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and ball milling for the simultaneous, effective recovery of PVC and copper (Cu) from thin electric cables. PVC coverings typically contain plasticizers for flexibility. As such, PVC cables become brittle after plasticizer extraction, causing them to be easily crushed by physical impact. Hence, we extracted the plasticizers from the PVC coverings of electric cables using organic solvents, and then crushed the obtained cable samples by ball milling. The influences of the plasticizer extraction yield and PVC morphologies before and after extraction on separation by ball milling were investigated. After a series of treatments to PVC coverings including quantitatively de-plasticizing for 5 h by Soxhlet-extraction in diethyl ether, 6 h ball milling and 1 h shaking in the sieve shaker, a maximum separation rate of 77% was achieved and the purity of the obtained separated Cu reached >99.8%.