Study and analysis of techniques and approaches to refurbish mobile phones for re-use, including approaches to recover and recycle components in accordance with the principles of circular economy and environmental sustainability

Mobile phones include a large and growing portion of global electronic waste, and the life extension of electronic devices is a potential solution for reducing this waste stream. The production, use, and disposal of mobile phones can impose a considerable environmental burden. This thesis focuses on the systematic and sequential processes of refurbishment, recycling, and recovery of mobile phones to reuse their functional electronic components with special attention on waste-printed circuit boards (WPCBs) to recover precious metals via physical, pyrometallurgical, hydrometallurgical, and bio metallurgical methods. However, several difficulties still exist due to environmental problems consisting of end-of-life WEEE management. To this end, a systematic review through the PRISMA method has been applied. The evaluated end-of-use scenarios of refurbishing, recycling, and recovery show the greatest potential for mobile phones regarding the Circular Economy, since most of the environmental effects are attributed to device production, and the consequences of additional steps for implementing CE strategies (such as collecting discarded phones and refurbishing) are relatively rare. Additionally, the life cycle of valuable metals like gold, silver, copper etc., can be extended through the refurbishment, recycling, and recovery of mobile phones, providing an environmental benefit by reducing CO2 emissions and optimizing material usage (embodied energy of materials). Nonetheless, standards for mobile phone refurbishment must be established, and lifetime environmental impacts should be captured and analyzed.