Novel Development of Corrosion Resistant Paint Using Printed Circuit Board from Modern Electronic Wastes

The growth in the industrial technology and communication sectors has enhanced the usage of electronic gadgets exponentially. Thus, it becomes highly essential to find new solution to utilize or dispose these e-wastes, in order to reduce the e-waste generation. Various reports mentioned that the major component of these e-wastes is their Printed Circuit Boards. Therefore, a new ideology is proposed to use these boards to produce a new coating with good corrosion resistance. At first the boards were separated from the discarded electronic appliances and various electrical elements were separated from these boards. Then the plain circuit boards are pulverized into fine particles and mixed with paint in 3 different proportions ranging from 1:4 to 1:2. The resulting mix was applied over the steel specimen and tested for corrosion resistance. The assessment was done in the aspects of contact angle, weight loss percentage, potentio dynamic polarization technique and electro chemical impedance spectroscopy. From the results it was clear that increase in the addition of printed circuit powder content in the corrosion proof paint coating enhanced the efficiency of the corrosion resistant behaviour 3.5 times than the specimen with uncoated steel specimens. This development of corrosion resistant behaviour of printed circuit powder was attributed from the inertness offered by the presence of silicon dioxides towards the corrosive fluids. Although, the coating of 1:2 proved to be optimum to protect the steel elements from the aggressive corrosion environment, by considering the workability aspects the 1:3 combination was suggested for the innovative development of anti-corrosion paint coating from the e-waste resources. HIGHLIGHTS Life cycles of every electronic wastes end with the hazardous challenging disposals Innovative utilizations of these electronic wastes for the corrosion resistant structural applications were detailed An anti corrosive coating for steel reinforcement was developed from the waste printed circuit boards Coating by printed circuit board powder enhanced 3.5 times more protection from the corrosion GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT