Urban mining soon to be more efficient and sustainable

What could be more sustainable than recycling? Quite simply: recycling processes that rely exclusively on recyclable materials. For example, an interdisciplinary research team at Flinders University in Bedford Park, Australia, has now achieved what amounts to squaring the circle in the field of gold recovery: in order to recover gold from electronic waste, the scientists have developed and successfully implemented an innovative method that not only makes urban mining  more environmentally friendly, but also more cost-efficient. 

Electronic waste currently growing five times faster than urban mining

One of the main obstacles to comprehensive gold recovery is the high cost of recycling gold from PC circuit boards and smartphones, which continues to slow down progress in this area:  in laboratory tests, a team led by lead researcher Maximilian Mann successfully extracted a higher concentration of gold from finely ground electronic waste than is typically found in ore using conventional mining methods. The key to this technique lies in a reusable, low-cost and above all completely non-toxic chemical, commonly used in water treatment: trichloroisocyanuric acid, the same compound used to chlorinate swimming pool water.

Traditional gold mining could also become more sustainable

According to Maximilian Mann, the innovative gold recovery method works not only with electronic waste but also with ore. In the future, this could mean that gold mines might replace mercury and cyanide salts with the far more environmentally friendly trichloroisocyanuric acid. The Australian research team is currently working with environmental organisations, urban mining companies and traditional mining operators to further optimise and adapt their technique so that sustainable gold extraction can be implemented in real-world practice.

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