A research team guided by Cornell University has created a new procedure to extract 99.9% of the gold from electronic waste in order to transform carbon dioxide into useful organic materials.
Thrown away electronics are a growing problem, as the global e-waste monitor report 2024 explained. Around 62 million tons (68 million tons) were generated in 2022 with an expected increase of 2.6 million tons (2.8 million tons) per year. Less than a quarter of them were collected and recycled, with around 62 billion dollars of resources ending up on landfills.
After the debriefing, the postdoctoral student Amin Zadehnazari developed the groundbreaking recycling process, while he worked in the alireza Abbaspourrad laboratory, professor of food chemistry and ingredient technology.
It is an non-toxic method for extracting gold out of electric waste by using covalent organic materials (COFS). These can selectively grasp 99.9% of the gold of things such as circuit boards and other thrown away electronics.
“We can then use the gold -loaded COFs to convert CO2 into useful chemicals,” as Zadehnazari shared in a press release.
“By converting CO2 into value creation materials, we not only reduce the disposal of waste, we also offer both ecological and practical advantages. This is a kind of win-win-win situation for the environment.”
There is potentially ten times more gold in a ton of e-waste than the same arch-amount as the debriefing shared. The failure to recover this material is a missed opportunity for a more environmentally friendly circular economy and could reduce the dependence on mining operation.
“It is very important to know how much gold and other precious metals can flow into this type of electronic devices in order to repeat them in such a way that they can selectively grasp the desired metal – in this case gold -” said Abbaspourrad.
Recycling processes have developed in recent years, as the United Nations explained, but some development nations still use dangerous toxic chemicals to dissolve metals and other materials in electronic waste. This can lead to contamination of soil and water sources and damage the nearby communities.
Fortunately, there were several progress in the recycling sector, with many relying on automated facilities to protect people from toxic materials. Finding paths to repair older devices instead of disposing of them can also contain the flood of the e-waste.
Sustainable recycling methods such as Zadehnazaris are an important step to contain the emissions of the planets, and the financing of the National Science Foundation was crucial for the support of this research.
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