With the rapid development of electronic industry

the quantity of abandoned printed circuit board also increases year by year. This great amount of waste printed circuit boards may cause serious pollution to the environment. Waste printed circuit boards are of high recycling value. If appropriate methods of its recovery are adopted

it’s of great significance not only to solve our country’s increasingly shortage of mineral resources

but also to the environment protection. This paper expounds the economic and environmental significance of recycling waste printed circuit boards

and introduces in details three chemical recovery methods as hydrometallurgy method

pyrolysis method and supercritical fluid method.