Tech companies partnering up to mine gold from old electronics
Wednesday, 7 February 2018
Precious metals like gold could soon be mined from the scraps of your old laptops and cell phones.
Technology companies Mint Innovation and Remarkit Solutions have joined forces to build a processing facility to recover precious metal from electronic waste.
Mint Innovation developed a low-cost process that used chemicals and microorganisms to purify precious metals from e-waste.
Mint Innovation's head, Will Barker said gold was specifically used in the motherboards of computers because of its strong conductive properties.
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The process has been developed in independent technology lab Level Two, the that also housed Peter Beck's Rocket Lab for six years.
Barker said one of his teams had extracted precious metals on a small scale and was looking to take the technology further.
'We know the Government is keen to keep e-waste out of landfills and New Zealand being named and shamed in a report on e-waste by the UN-funded International Telecommunications Union in late last year has certainly sharpened our focus,' Barker said.
According to the UN report e-waste around the world contained more than €55 billion (NZ$93b) worth of recoverable materials, including about €19b gold.
The facility in Auckland would initially process up to 200 tonnes of old circuit boards a year, expected to produce up to 40 kilograms of gold, Barker said.
With gold being worth at $66,255 a kg this yield more than $2.6 million mined each year.
Remarkit set up the country's first e-waste collections and has the largest processors.
General manager Nathan Bell said e-mining meant New Zealand could start to recover and recycle precious metals from e-waste rather than exporting it.
Electronic rubbish is the fastest growing form of waste in the world, he says. Although often highly toxic, it also contains precious reusable components.
New Zealand along with a number of Western countries had been seeking ways to get rid of waste since China lcosed its borders to many waste imports at the start of they year.
China processed about 70 per cent of the world's e-waste in 2012.
Bell said the technology being developed to mine old electronics could become the solution for urban centres across the world.
The companies are looking to raise $5m in by the end of the year to launch the processing system early next year.