Golden Waste

The coin-producing Royal Mint in the UK in partnership with a Canadian start up Excir, has envisaged an ambitious plan to recover gold, silver and other precious metals from e-waste through a revolutionary new technology. Similar process has been used in the past for extracting silver from spent photograph films that were made with silver based emulsion. Extraction of uranium is also done on similar lines. However, this is the first time that this technology has been applied to e-waste.

95%+ of gold, palladium, silver, and copper could be recovered, thus creating reasonable economic value from hitherto untapped sources. Gold extracted in experimental stages had a purity of 999.9. Similar technology was then planned and applied for palladium, silver, and copper, as well. They are further working on technology to upcycle all kind of e-waste (including precious metals, base metals, and plastics) into usable products contributing towards circular economy and a zero-landfill world.

The Royal Mint will soon recycle discarded phones and laptops. The extraction works on principles of chemistry and selectively targets precious metals, extracting them from electronic circuit boards within few seconds. The gold and other metals can then be melted into ingots for production of coins at the Royal Mint were over 3.3 billion coins are produced every year.

Earlier, e-waste found its way to landfills or was sent outside the UK to poorer countries where high temperature smelters are used to melt the metals. The extraction is now planned to be done at room temperature at the Royal Mint main site in Wales. According to Excir, the mild process is eco-friendly and has negligible environmental impact. Canadian government supported the startup with over $4 million financial aid. This is a testimonial of Canada’s commitment to green and clean technology.

Electronic giants like Apple and Samsung have recently stopped including chargers and earphones in their new packages as a way of reducing e-waste, but it is not even a drop in the ocean as the volume at which today’s world generates e-waste is phenomenal. There have been efforts in the past but not at a large scale. I do recall that the Tokyo Olympics medals were made out of recycled metals!

The global e-easte weighed nearly 53.6 million tonnes in 2020, which was about 20% higher than what it was in 2015; and it is estimated to continue to rise up to 74 million tonnes by 2030. The value of raw material alone in global e-waste is approximately $57 billion, more than the GDP of most countries. It is surprising to note that not even 20% of it is currently recycled. So the new technology from Excir could be a great breakthrough in mitigating this environment challenge arising out of our fast developing technology and electronic use.

Source and Reference:   

https://www.techspot.com/news/91842-uk-royal-mint-using-revolutionary-new-tech-recover.html#commentsOffset

https://www.excir.com/