6 ms·

Royal Mint to build ‘world first’ plant to turn UK’s electronic waste into gold

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wcoenen 5y ago
There may be something new about the process here, but there are other processing plants that recover gold from e-waste. Umicore has a plant in Belgium which does this.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Do you know much about the process in Belgium? I've been trying to learn more about proper handling of e-waste in the country; there's not much information available. The companies I know just chuck it in the all-purpose bin with batteries removed.
  - rapnie 5y ago
    See video link in my other comment. It highlights Umicore in Belgium and films their process (dating 2015). You may find some details on their site. https://www.umicore.com/en/about/recycling/ https://www.umicore.com/en/about/recycling/
  - wcoenen 5y ago
    The batteries are first separated from the phones; this happens elsewhere. The remainder of the phones arrive at the processing plant in Hoboken (near Antwerp) and are shredded. Each batch of finely shredded material is analyzed for its content to determine value and to choose processing details. After shredding and analysis, the material goes into a large (15 meter high) smelting oven. (The burning of plastic from the phones contributes to the heat, but it's not the main heat source. Probably natural gas?) Sulfur is recovered from the gasses coming from the oven to produce sulfuric acid, which is used in processes further downstream or sold. The oven produces a batch of molten metal, which is then separated in stages through chemistry. E.g. oxygen is injected and some metals react with this and the oxides float to the top. A bunch of other chemistry is done. Some stuff may go to another oven. The recovered metals are either returned to the supplier of the input material, or sold by Umicore itself. They sell gold at https://umicoregoldshop.be https://umicoregoldshop.be , though I'm not sure whether it's all from e-waste.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rapnie 5y ago
Do we really have a 'world first' here? I remember seeing a "Backlight" documentary on Dutch TV on the subject of Urban Mining [0] in 2015. [0] https://yewtu.be/watch?v=kxlmTRWeppM https://yewtu.be/watch?v=kxlmTRWeppM
Overtonwindow 5y ago
I think the "world first" here is that a national Mint is going to use the process to recover precious metals. AFICT, Britain's Royal Mint is the only first world Mint actively pursuing e-waste and precious metal recovery. The process is not exactly novel as it's done all around the world, but the key point here may be the "chemistry" that it will use. That makes me think of some type of dissolving solution that frees the metal to then be collected electromechanically.
dghughes 5y ago
Gold is probably the least valuable metal in electronics there are many more that are more expensive and useful.
- ben_bai 5y ago
  Gold might be a key metal for the future, unless the costs prohibit it. For example Palladium-Gold catalysts (CO2 reduction) or nano particle gold plating (PV solar) or AuNPs (medical)
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    I think he meant market-value. Some guy at a landfill explained to me that SMD caps were a lot better.
- loufe 5y ago
  True, but the release did say they are recovering all precious metals, not just gold.
- amelius 5y ago
  There's also aluminum which is less expensive.
- nly 5y ago
  Then Royal Mint already have everything in place to monetize the Gold though, so it's hardly surprising it's priority. This is also a pretty shrewd ESG play - in the future more Gold can be included in to ESG funds because it's not being mined in say...China and Russia, the worlds top 2 producers.
droopyEyelids 5y ago
This is off topic, but I'm deeply curious what a plant to recycle lithium batteries looks like. I believe they'd be handling almost every form of matter, from solid lithium to liquid electolyte, the combustion gasses of bad batteries blowing up, and the plasma of the fire itself. Seems like a hell of a challenge and I'd love to hear all about it. (extracting gold is simpler, by comparison, and can be done at home by the sufficiently motivated- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASQCa7mfjVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASQCa7mfjVo)
- Overtonwindow 5y ago
  This might help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6mIKytM5BM&ab_channel=BusinessInsider https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6mIKytM5BM&ab_channel=Busin...
  - droopyEyelids 5y ago
    Awesome! but they keep the interesting part secret (how to prevent fires during the actual recycling, how to deal with a plant that handles bombs before they are in the recycling process itself)
pjc50 5y ago
Trying to find some background on "Excir", the company whose technology is being used, and they've been on Dragons Den! https://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/m_pitches/excir-works https://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/m_pitches/excir-works https://www.cheminst.ca/magazine/article/saskatchewan-chemist-strikes-gold-in-the-dragons-den/ https://www.cheminst.ca/magazine/article/saskatchewan-chemis... And these appear to be their patents for the leachant: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180112289A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180112289A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180142322A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180142322A1/en TLDR rather than traditional high-temperature or extremely acidic solvents, they have a room-temperature gold-specific solvent. I'd still like a little more detail about how the process works; how do they delaminate boards? What happens to the tin solder, the FR4, and other bits and pieces?
- latchkey 5y ago
  "Sorry, this content is not available in your region." Hops on vpn to Canada, reloads page, watches cool 4 year old video. CBC serves me some ads and gets another MAU. I wish I felt like I was doing something bad.
- nebula8804 5y ago
  From what I understand(and someone can correct me if I am wrong), FR4 is an epoxy material that cannot really be broken down so what is done is that the boards are ground up and then the copper is extracted from the powder. Not sure what happens to the rest. [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_LPejkU8rE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_LPejkU8rE
jotm 5y ago
And still ship the leftover waste to poor countries? Whenever I read "circular economy" I want to smash my head into a wall. Just so you understand where that's coming from: I worked for one of the largest appliance recycling companies in the UK. I watched as hundreds of thousands of perfectly good spare parts were thrown away and like 80% of the incoming shipments being reshipped to India and Africa. They did resell whole appliances for seemingly unprofitable prices, though. Several flooded flats and even electrical fires because of piss poor testing. I watched as people were poisoned (lead from CRTs, whatever the fuck is in fridge lining and compressors) in their factory because of extremely poor H&S. Actually, was affected myself, now I have to beg for a very simple medicine for the rest of my life. I watched as people were fired on the spot after getting in accidents (due to said poor H&S) and got zero compensation. They were dumping toxic chemicals in the local sewage system while getting 4-5 star ratings from the environment agency. Ran by greedy, dumb management, I swear the company exists just to get government funding instead of actually being useful or turning a profit.
kderbyma 5y ago
Definitely not a world first. interesting - Europol had a crackdown on the ewaste market a few years back
- sschueller 5y ago
  Switzerland does something similar with what is left after trash has been burned. It is against the law for the left over ash (schlake) to contain more than 1% of metal. Therefore they extract it and sell it making a profit. https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/redirect/detail/d8f14e5f-c921-446a-89c8-8b73d5642260 https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/redirect/detail/d8f14e5f-c921-446... (Swiss German)
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Nothing really new.. I've seen this happening 20 years ago at smaller scale. Problem is these people often dumped every other natural resource that was not worth as much.. I hope that won't happen here. Edit: According to the article they will recycle less popular elements as well. I hope so...
- rwmj 5y ago
  I distinctly remember a TV programme from the 1980s which mentioned the large gold content (probably larger back then) of electronics and how companies were recycling it. Nothing new at all.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    It definitely was larger yes. Almost every contact was gold-plated back then. And thicker too. Part of this was necessity, due to everything being analog signal noise ratios were a lot more important. Gold stops contacts from oxidising. But electronics are also produced in a much more minimalist way, both to conserve cost and materials (these being good things) but also because they don't care if it lasts beyond the warranty period. The latter is obviously a bad thing. In the 1980s if your TV broke you'd go to a repairman, you wouldn't buy a new one. It's kind of crazy how we've come to accept electronics only lasting 2-3 years.
sgt 5y ago
How many retro computers or interesting old hardware will be lost? I hope they have some kind of rudimentary sorting to detect old hardware that may be of interest to collectors.
- jcadam 5y ago
  The VESA local bus is dead, let it go...
- Symbiote 5y ago
  Unlikely, similar to anything else you throw in the recycling bin.
zahllos 5y ago
Aside from electronic waste, if you ever happen to be in South Wales you can visit the Royal Mint and it is quite fascinating. They strike coins not just for the UK but also quite a few other nations. They also make the precursor alloy mixes for quite a few more nations, who then only do the striking part for their national currency. All in all, there is a possibility your nation's coins may have in part been made there. The exhibition they have explains it better than I can and you can see out onto part of the factory floor. I also got to strike a coin... Well... The machine struck it but I pressed "please strike it". So. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon if you are there.
- humanwhosits 5y ago
  > but also quite a few other nations That's a surprising amount of trust
  - dankboys 5y ago
    If they can provide better anti-forgery protections then why not?
    - themihai 5y ago
      one reason would be the UK dumping forged money perhaps through 3rd parties? (i.e. like the Switzerland sold compromised crypto machines)
      - pjc50 5y ago
        The kind of thing you only get to do once. Well, maybe not entirely. War is an exception: http://www.psywarrior.com/BritishForgeriesWWI.html http://www.psywarrior.com/BritishForgeriesWWI.html vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard (Nazi Germany forging British notes)
  - Swenrekcah 5y ago
    I don’t think any amount of coin ‘forgery’ the UK could possible achieve would be worth the effort, let alone the reputational cost when discovered.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

There may be something new about the process here, but there are other processing plants that recover gold from e-waste. Umicore has a plant in Belgium which does this.

scrollaway 5y ago
Do you know much about the process in Belgium? I've been trying to learn more about proper handling of e-waste in the country; there's not much information available. The companies I know just chuck it in the all-purpose bin with batteries removed.
- rapnie 5y ago
  See video link in my other comment. It highlights Umicore in Belgium and films their process (dating 2015). You may find some details on their site. https://www.umicore.com/en/about/recycling/ https://www.umicore.com/en/about/recycling/
- wcoenen 5y ago
  The batteries are first separated from the phones; this happens elsewhere. The remainder of the phones arrive at the processing plant in Hoboken (near Antwerp) and are shredded. Each batch of finely shredded material is analyzed for its content to determine value and to choose processing details. After shredding and analysis, the material goes into a large (15 meter high) smelting oven. (The burning of plastic from the phones contributes to the heat, but it's not the main heat source. Probably natural gas?) Sulfur is recovered from the gasses coming from the oven to produce sulfuric acid, which is used in processes further downstream or sold. The oven produces a batch of molten metal, which is then separated in stages through chemistry. E.g. oxygen is injected and some metals react with this and the oxides float to the top. A bunch of other chemistry is done. Some stuff may go to another oven. The recovered metals are either returned to the supplier of the input material, or sold by Umicore itself. They sell gold at https://umicoregoldshop.be https://umicoregoldshop.be , though I'm not sure whether it's all from e-waste.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rapnie 5y ago

Do we really have a 'world first' here? I remember seeing a "Backlight" documentary on Dutch TV on the subject of Urban Mining [0] in 2015. [0] https://yewtu.be/watch?v=kxlmTRWeppM https://yewtu.be/watch?v=kxlmTRWeppM

Overtonwindow 5y ago

I think the "world first" here is that a national Mint is going to use the process to recover precious metals. AFICT, Britain's Royal Mint is the only first world Mint actively pursuing e-waste and precious metal recovery. The process is not exactly novel as it's done all around the world, but the key point here may be the "chemistry" that it will use. That makes me think of some type of dissolving solution that frees the metal to then be collected electromechanically.

dghughes 5y ago

Gold is probably the least valuable metal in electronics there are many more that are more expensive and useful.

ben_bai 5y ago
Gold might be a key metal for the future, unless the costs prohibit it. For example Palladium-Gold catalysts (CO2 reduction) or nano particle gold plating (PV solar) or AuNPs (medical)
- agumonkey 5y ago
  I think he meant market-value. Some guy at a landfill explained to me that SMD caps were a lot better.
loufe 5y ago
True, but the release did say they are recovering all precious metals, not just gold.
amelius 5y ago
There's also aluminum which is less expensive.
nly 5y ago
Then Royal Mint already have everything in place to monetize the Gold though, so it's hardly surprising it's priority. This is also a pretty shrewd ESG play - in the future more Gold can be included in to ESG funds because it's not being mined in say...China and Russia, the worlds top 2 producers.

droopyEyelids 5y ago

This is off topic, but I'm deeply curious what a plant to recycle lithium batteries looks like. I believe they'd be handling almost every form of matter, from solid lithium to liquid electolyte, the combustion gasses of bad batteries blowing up, and the plasma of the fire itself. Seems like a hell of a challenge and I'd love to hear all about it. (extracting gold is simpler, by comparison, and can be done at home by the sufficiently motivated- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASQCa7mfjVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASQCa7mfjVo)

Overtonwindow 5y ago
This might help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6mIKytM5BM&ab_channel=BusinessInsider https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6mIKytM5BM&ab_channel=Busin...
- droopyEyelids 5y ago
  Awesome! but they keep the interesting part secret (how to prevent fires during the actual recycling, how to deal with a plant that handles bombs before they are in the recycling process itself)

pjc50 5y ago

Trying to find some background on "Excir", the company whose technology is being used, and they've been on Dragons Den! https://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/m_pitches/excir-works https://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/m_pitches/excir-works https://www.cheminst.ca/magazine/article/saskatchewan-chemist-strikes-gold-in-the-dragons-den/ https://www.cheminst.ca/magazine/article/saskatchewan-chemis... And these appear to be their patents for the leachant: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180112289A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180112289A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180142322A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180142322A1/en TLDR rather than traditional high-temperature or extremely acidic solvents, they have a room-temperature gold-specific solvent. I'd still like a little more detail about how the process works; how do they delaminate boards? What happens to the tin solder, the FR4, and other bits and pieces?

latchkey 5y ago
"Sorry, this content is not available in your region." Hops on vpn to Canada, reloads page, watches cool 4 year old video. CBC serves me some ads and gets another MAU. I wish I felt like I was doing something bad.
nebula8804 5y ago
From what I understand(and someone can correct me if I am wrong), FR4 is an epoxy material that cannot really be broken down so what is done is that the boards are ground up and then the copper is extracted from the powder. Not sure what happens to the rest. [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_LPejkU8rE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_LPejkU8rE

jotm 5y ago

And still ship the leftover waste to poor countries? Whenever I read "circular economy" I want to smash my head into a wall. Just so you understand where that's coming from: I worked for one of the largest appliance recycling companies in the UK. I watched as hundreds of thousands of perfectly good spare parts were thrown away and like 80% of the incoming shipments being reshipped to India and Africa. They did resell whole appliances for seemingly unprofitable prices, though. Several flooded flats and even electrical fires because of piss poor testing. I watched as people were poisoned (lead from CRTs, whatever the fuck is in fridge lining and compressors) in their factory because of extremely poor H&S. Actually, was affected myself, now I have to beg for a very simple medicine for the rest of my life. I watched as people were fired on the spot after getting in accidents (due to said poor H&S) and got zero compensation. They were dumping toxic chemicals in the local sewage system while getting 4-5 star ratings from the environment agency. Ran by greedy, dumb management, I swear the company exists just to get government funding instead of actually being useful or turning a profit.

kderbyma 5y ago

Definitely not a world first. interesting - Europol had a crackdown on the ewaste market a few years back

sschueller 5y ago
Switzerland does something similar with what is left after trash has been burned. It is against the law for the left over ash (schlake) to contain more than 1% of metal. Therefore they extract it and sell it making a profit. https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/redirect/detail/d8f14e5f-c921-446a-89c8-8b73d5642260 https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/redirect/detail/d8f14e5f-c921-446... (Swiss German)

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Nothing really new.. I've seen this happening 20 years ago at smaller scale. Problem is these people often dumped every other natural resource that was not worth as much.. I hope that won't happen here. Edit: According to the article they will recycle less popular elements as well. I hope so...

rwmj 5y ago
I distinctly remember a TV programme from the 1980s which mentioned the large gold content (probably larger back then) of electronics and how companies were recycling it. Nothing new at all.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  It definitely was larger yes. Almost every contact was gold-plated back then. And thicker too. Part of this was necessity, due to everything being analog signal noise ratios were a lot more important. Gold stops contacts from oxidising. But electronics are also produced in a much more minimalist way, both to conserve cost and materials (these being good things) but also because they don't care if it lasts beyond the warranty period. The latter is obviously a bad thing. In the 1980s if your TV broke you'd go to a repairman, you wouldn't buy a new one. It's kind of crazy how we've come to accept electronics only lasting 2-3 years.

sgt 5y ago

How many retro computers or interesting old hardware will be lost? I hope they have some kind of rudimentary sorting to detect old hardware that may be of interest to collectors.

jcadam 5y ago
The VESA local bus is dead, let it go...
Symbiote 5y ago
Unlikely, similar to anything else you throw in the recycling bin.

zahllos 5y ago

Aside from electronic waste, if you ever happen to be in South Wales you can visit the Royal Mint and it is quite fascinating. They strike coins not just for the UK but also quite a few other nations. They also make the precursor alloy mixes for quite a few more nations, who then only do the striking part for their national currency. All in all, there is a possibility your nation's coins may have in part been made there. The exhibition they have explains it better than I can and you can see out onto part of the factory floor. I also got to strike a coin... Well... The machine struck it but I pressed "please strike it". So. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon if you are there.

humanwhosits 5y ago
> but also quite a few other nations That's a surprising amount of trust
- dankboys 5y ago
  If they can provide better anti-forgery protections then why not?
  - themihai 5y ago
    one reason would be the UK dumping forged money perhaps through 3rd parties? (i.e. like the Switzerland sold compromised crypto machines)
    - pjc50 5y ago
      The kind of thing you only get to do once. Well, maybe not entirely. War is an exception: http://www.psywarrior.com/BritishForgeriesWWI.html http://www.psywarrior.com/BritishForgeriesWWI.html vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard (Nazi Germany forging British notes)
- Swenrekcah 5y ago
  I don’t think any amount of coin ‘forgery’ the UK could possible achieve would be worth the effort, let alone the reputational cost when discovered.