A novel approach on reverse electroplating to remove diamond particles and recover stainless steel wire from waste diamond coated wire

Abstract

Diamond coated wire (DCW) has been widely used in various industries such as semiconductors, photovoltaics and ceramics for cutting and slicing. Notably, the increasing demand for these wires has led to a significant amount of waste generation. The disposal of used DCW raises significant environmental concerns, including waste accumulation through landfilling, potential toxicity, and resource depletion. Furthermore, the economic implications are substantial, resulting in the loss of valuable materials and increased production costs. In this study, we present a new method for recovering waste DCW by extracting diamond particles and stainless steel (SS) wire by removing the Ni coating using the reverse electroplating (REP) process. In this technique, process parameters such as acid concentration (mole), time (minutes), temperature (°C), and current density (A dm⁻²) are optimised to achieve better efficiency. The surface morphology of the DCW was investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The metal layers and their composition were investigated using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses. After the REP, the particle size distribution of the retrieved diamond particles and the thickness of the SS wire core were measured. The removal efficiency for the nickel coating and diamond particles from the wire was calculated.