News Safer, faster, and cheaper way to extract gold at 99% purity from electronic waste detailed — new method for recovering gold from PCBs uses a sanit...

[Admin]

A Flinders University research team has developed a new way of recovering gold from ore and e-waste that's safer and more cost-efficient.

Safer, faster, and cheaper way to extract gold at 99% purity from electronic waste detailed — new method for recovering gold from PCBs uses a sanit... : Read more

 

[bit_user]

“We dived into a mound of e-waste and climbed out with a block of gold!"

I feel like some context is needed for this. I'm sure their "block" was measured in grams. It's still probably not an easy way to make money and doesn't solve the main problem with e-waste.

What they really need is a safe & effective way to separate out the copper from all the plastics and other materials, because the dominant method currently being used is to burn off the plastic and that creates lots of dangerous air pollution affecting the workers at these plants and their communities.

 

[abufrejoval]

One of the things about gold is that it can be applied incredibly thin.

So while those shining contacts seem to imply potentially wasted value, the actual mass is negligible.

While the term "recycling" hints at returning items to raw materials of similar value or usability, that only might work for the metal parts, copper from wires and coils, perhaps steel casings, not sure about solder.

Applying the term recycling for chips and PCBs is simply misleading: at the final end of their life-cycle there is no value and huge waste were the main goal must be safeguarding from the toxins.

And in the mean-time it would help if vendors got negative feedback as strong as the true damage they cause for pushing phony OS base requirements.