News Scientists use whey protein sponges to extract gold from computer parts — the process is 50X less expensive than the cost of gold, eco-friendly

[Admin]

A scientist from the Department of Health Sciences and Technology has discovered that whey proteins from dairy are a super effective tool that can help recycle gold from electronic waste.

Scientists use whey protein sponges to extract gold from computer parts — the process is 50X less expensive than the cost of gold, eco-friendly : Read more

 

[kjfatl]

The dairy industry spends millions of dollars each year disposing whey. It is interesting that a waste product from the dairy industry can be used profitably to process waste from the electronics industry.

 

[Co BIY]

The dairy industry spends millions of dollars each year disposing whey. It is interesting that a waste product from the dairy industry can be used profitably to process waste from the electronics industry.

Interesting, around here athletes and health nuts spend millions buying whey protein drinks.

If you want to take a deep dive into whey as a hazardous waste and potential resource ...

https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i6/Acid-whey-waste-product-untapped.html

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Apparent uncredited, uncited source article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202310642

 

[bit_user]

This reminds me of how dehydrated cranberry powder curdles the milk in my granola. That's essentially the proteins falling out of solution and bonding to the acidic bits of cranberry. The milk coats the cranberries so thoroughly that you can hardly even taste them.

Also, didn't realize whey was a waste product. You see it as a food ingredient, often enough. I sometimes add whey protein isolate, when I want to increase the protein content of a food. The protein isolate has none of the sugars (e.g. lactose, oligosaccharides). Whey protein is pretty well-matched to human dietary needs, in terms of its amino acid profile.

 

[Zorbas]

Interesting, though the comparison with other processes is not very explicit. The traditional process of extracting gold requires strong acids to dissolve the pcb, later the gold itself (with aqua regia), and get the gold back from solution. If I understand correctly, most of the acid stuff remains "to ionize the metals", only the aqua regia is skipped. How eco-friendly is that? And how does the cost compare? 1/50 of the cost of gold is nice, but how much is the normal process?

 

[NinoPino]

@aaron may be a typo in "Recycling previous metals...", would you mean "Recycling precious..." ?