Old Electronic Devices Provide Precious Metals for Recyclers
The electronic devices that surround you on a daily basis are built with many components that contain precious metals of gold, silver, copper, and palladium. From cell phones to modems and computers, old electronics are finding a new lease on life in the electronics recycling marketplace.
The Importance of Electronics Recycling
Electronics recycling is critical in diverting solid waste and supporting zero landfill initiatives. Also highly significant, electronics recycling helps eliminate toxic scrap. While it constitutes a minority of solid waste, it represents up to 70% of toxic waste.
This e-waste is a particularly rich source of precious metals—with concentrations 40 to 50 times more abundant than naturally occurring in ore deposits. There are over 320 tons of gold and greater than 7,500 tons of silver used each year to make new electronic products around the world.
As a result, there are more than $21 billion in precious metals inventoried in these devices—$16 billion worth of gold and $5 billion worth of silver, until a time when they can be recycled. The carbon footprint of both metals and plastics recovered through recycling is much smaller than for the production of the same materials from virgin sources.
Recovery of Precious Metals
The recovery of these precious metals is no small issue. While a modern recycling facility can recover as much as 95% of gold, in developing countries, the crude dismantling processes employed may recover only 50% of this precious metal. Also, if done incorrectly, the recovery process can expose workers to a wide range of hazardous substances.
Overall, the current recovery rates of e-waste for processing are quite small.
Not enough of overall devices find their way to recyclers, and for the ones that do, not enough metals are recovered from those devices, on a global scale. Recycling results in only a 10 to 15% recovery of all the gold stored in e-waste. The rest is lost.
Recycling of E-Waste
The recycling process varies among jurisdictions. The processing of e-scrap involves primary and secondary steps. In the primary phase, electronic devices are dismantled or demanufactured, and the components sorted. Further processing then takes place, often at secondary recycling facilities. This can involve a variety of processes to crush and sort material through the use of magnets, screens, and eddy currents. A smelting process is utilized to liberate precious metals from electronics components.
One promising new process promises to more quickly and inexpensively recover gold from old computers and other electronic devices, with less environmental impact. Their process makes use of a solution—acetic acid combined with very small amounts of an oxidant and another acid, which researchers say dissolves gold at the fastest rate ever known.
In the future, the waste stream of today will increasingly be recognized as a material recovery opportunity, a necessary outcome as we strive towards sustainability.
Super Metal Recycling is based in Dandenong, Victoria, servicing for all types of Scrap Metals, Unwanted Cars, Junk Cars, Free Car Removals, Wrecked Cars, Smashed Cars, throughout Melbourne Metro areas. We offer cash for Scrap Cars, specialise in Old Car Removals, Car Wreckage Removal, Recycling of old cars and Scrap Metal Recycling.
If you are at Beaconsfield, below is the best way to visit us.
Super Metal Recycling
345 Frankston – Dandenong Road, Dandenong South VIC 3175
(03) 9706 4909
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