Researchers from the University of Flinders in Australia have developed a safer method of gold extraction and recovery from ore and electronic waste.
It is noted that the new technology is designed to reduce the level of toxic waste from mining and demonstrates that high quality gold can be obtained by recycling valuable components from the printed circuit boards of used computers. The researchers, led by Professor Justin Chalker’s researchers have taken a comprehensive approach to high-throughput gold recovery from multiple sources, extracting traces of gold even from scientific waste.
«Many innovations were presented in the study, including a new, recyclable leaching agent derived from a compound used to disinfect water. The team has also developed a new way to make a polymeric sorbent, or material that binds gold after it is extracted into water, using light to initiate a key reaction», — says Professor of Chemistry Justin Chalker.
Now the scientists plan to cooperate with mining companies and recycling of electronic waste to test the method on a larger scale. To extract gold from ore and e-waste, the following reagents are used trichloroisocyanuric acid, which is also widely used for cleaning and water disinfection. When exposed to salt water, the reagent is able to dissolve gold.
The gold is then bound to a new sulfur-rich polymer developed by the team of scientists. The selectivity of the polymer allows for the extraction of gold even from very complex mixtures. The gold can then be recovered and the polymer converted back to a monomer, recycled and reused.
In addition to being historically highly valued, gold is widely used in in electronics, medicine, aerospace technologies and other scientific and technical fields. Gold mining involves the use of highly toxic substances, such as cyanide and mercury. Gold mining also leads to carbon emissions and deforestation.
Gold mining typically involves the use of highly toxic cyanide to extract the precious metal from ore, which poses environmental risks if not properly contained. Artisanal and small-scale gold mines still use mercury to amalgamate gold. Unfortunately, the use of mercury in gold mining is one of the largest sources of mercury pollution on Earth.
Many e-waste components, such as processor units and RAM cards, contain valuable metals such as gold and copper. The method proposed by the scientists is a significant step towards more sustainable solutions in the field of circular economy for more efficient use of scarce resources in the world.
The results of the study are published in the journal Nature Sustainability
Source: TechXplore
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