They take a lot of gold out of the garbage. All they needed was the right material
A Korean team of scientists has developed a technology that enables the selective recovery of high-purity gold from electrical devices and electronic waste. Textile material was used for this purpose.
Fibrous adsorbent Radically shortens the gold recovery process and reduces its costs. Only textile material can be mass produced and recycled many times. The website Naukawpolsce.pl reports about the new material, citing the “Chemical Engineering Journal”.
Textiles, not pellets
The main change in the approach to recovering gold from garbage involves the use of new technology. So far such processes used adsorbents in the form of granules. Unfortunately, it was difficult to recover them, which could lead to further environmental pollution. Fibrous materials are in this respect much easier to shape and use.
Researchers in South Korea chemically immobilized alkaline molecules on the surface of polyacrylonitrile fibers (PANF) to improve both molecular gold recovery efficiency and structural stability. A polymer fiber containing an amine has a much larger surface area, which can improve the adsorption efficiency of gold ions by up to 2.5 times (Au) in the waste compared to the granulate previously developed by the team (from 576 mg/g to 1462 mg/g).
What deserves special attention is the fact that practically only gold ions can be recovered. The purity of the obtained metal exceeds 99.9%. even in the presence of 14 other metal ions coexisting in the solution. What's more, the gold recovery rate remained at 91%. even after 10 uses of the adsorbent – reports the website Naukawpolsce.pl
Ultimately, researchers from Korea want to increase the scope of subsequent research by possibility of recovering other metals as well. In turn, specialists expect that the global circular economy market will more than double in the near future – from approximately $338 billion in 2022 to approximately $712 billion in 2026.
