When it comes to salvaging gold, you might think of jewellery, coins or even gold teeth. But vast quantities of gold are recovered every year from a different source – mobile phones.
Until recently, methods for extracting the precious metal have been inefficient and dangerous.
Now a new technique using a simple chemical has been designed which could help the development of methods for large-scale recovery of gold.
HOW IT WORKS
The method involves placing the circuit boards into mild acid to dissolve all the metal parts.
An oily liquid which contains a chemical compound is then added, which only extracts the gold. The researchers hope that this method will improve how gold is recovered from discarded waste, and could reduce the environmental impact of gold mining.
The finding could help salvage some of the estimated 300 tonnes of gold used in electronics each year, they say because electrical waste – including mobile phones, TVs and computers AND SIMCARDS – is thought to contain as much as 7% of all the world’s gold – Tell your neighbour, I said what?! 7%!
Extracting gold from mobile phones is not a new phenomenon, and companies have been doing it for years but current methods are inefficient, and can be hazardous to health because they use toxic chemicals without proper handling.
Professor Jason Love, who led the study, told the science community: ‘Current gold extraction processes use toxic chemicals such as cyanide or mercury which have high toxicity, plus the waste materials remaining after gold recovery often contain toxic metals such as lead.‘
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh have now developed a new extraction method that does not use these toxic chemicals, and recovers more gold.
Professor Love said: ‘We are very excited about this discovery, especially as we have shown that our fundamental chemical studies could have potential economic and societal benefits.‘
I bet that old Samsung or Nokia is looking really good about now, abi?
Where is my nokia 3310, man must hammer money one way or another.