Who is making gold jewellery from old phones?
The Royal Mint in the United Kingdom and a Canadian company called Excir are working together to recycle valuable materials from old electronic products. Excir has developed a technology to safely extract and reuse gold and other precious metals found in electronic waste (e-waste).
Excir's patented method can quickly recover over 99% of the gold found in old and discarded mobile phones and laptop' circuit boards.
What is the process of removing the gold?
A special liquid is poured into a glass jar with tiny pieces of circuit boards. Then, a machine is used to shake the jar. The gold present in those tiny pieces quickly dissolves into the liquid. After that, another liquid is added to turn the gold into powder. This powder is separated and melted down into small gold pieces.
How do they extract gold from huge amounts of circuit boards?
A large factory is set up to extract gold from a large number of circuit boards. These boards come from different places in the country. When the boards arrive, they are checked. The parts without gold are separated from those with gold, like USB ports.
The gold parts go into a big container. The first solution is used on them. Then, the second solution is used to make powder gold, which is then turned into small gold pieces.
The Royal Mint also plans to make a bigger factory to handle 90 tonnes (90,000 kg) of circuit boards every week. This will help recover a lot of gold. They have also announced a jewellery division named “886 by The Royal Mint” to create gold jewellery pieces.
Why are circuit boards being used to extract gold?
E-waste is estimated to contain 7% of the world's gold. That’s a lot of gold; recovering it can help create other items. Also, every year, a lot of e-waste is generated. If nothing is done to recycle and reuse them, it will harm our environment. So, this new initiative by the Royal Mint can help save our environment by recycling e-waste.
