{"title":"Scalable and selective gold recovery from end-of-life electronics","authors":"Hengjun Shang, Yao Chen, Shuhui Guan, Yue Wang, Jiazhen Cao, Xinru Wang, Hexing Li, Zhenfeng Bian","doi":"10.1038/s44286-023-00026-w","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The rapid accumulation of end-of-life electronics around the world has a disastrous impact on the environment because much of this otherwise valuable resource goes to landfills. Electronic waste (e-waste) contains significant amounts of precious metals, in the case of gold (Au), far in excess of those found in natural minerals. Recovering these metals from e-waste provides a potential sustainable path, but current recycling routes are not yet up to the task. Here we show a photocatalytic process that allows for selective, efficient and scalable extraction of Au from different forms of e-waste. The dissolution takes no more than 12 h, and further reducing the leachate yields Au metal with purity up to 99.0%. In a large-scale setting, our system can treat 10 kg of e-waste for a single batch and recover 8.82 g of Au. By advancing precious metal recycling to a level closer to practical implementation, this work will contribute to a more sustainable future for electronics. Selective recovery of gold from electronic waste using mild reagents is a challenge. Now a photocatalytic technology is reported to enable highly selective gold dissolution through solvent pH adjustment. This process is scaled up to allow for the efficient handling of a single batch of 10 kg of electronic waste.","PeriodicalId":501699,"journal":{"name":"Nature Chemical Engineering","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Nature Chemical Engineering","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44286-023-00026-w","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The rapid accumulation of end-of-life electronics around the world has a disastrous impact on the environment because much of this otherwise valuable resource goes to landfills. Electronic waste (e-waste) contains significant amounts of precious metals, in the case of gold (Au), far in excess of those found in natural minerals. Recovering these metals from e-waste provides a potential sustainable path, but current recycling routes are not yet up to the task. Here we show a photocatalytic process that allows for selective, efficient and scalable extraction of Au from different forms of e-waste. The dissolution takes no more than 12 h, and further reducing the leachate yields Au metal with purity up to 99.0%. In a large-scale setting, our system can treat 10 kg of e-waste for a single batch and recover 8.82 g of Au. By advancing precious metal recycling to a level closer to practical implementation, this work will contribute to a more sustainable future for electronics. Selective recovery of gold from electronic waste using mild reagents is a challenge. Now a photocatalytic technology is reported to enable highly selective gold dissolution through solvent pH adjustment. This process is scaled up to allow for the efficient handling of a single batch of 10 kg of electronic waste.