Scalable and selective gold recovery from end-of-life electronics

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.