"This Sponge Captures the Teeny Bits of Gold in Electronic Waste" scientificamerican.com October 29, 2024

[electronicscrap]

This Sponge Captures the Teeny Bits of Gold in Electronic Waste

I wonder what you guys think?
Maybe someone wants to homebrew this themselves?


I'm not a chemical or a fire guy, just a packrat learning a lot reading GRF.

 

[Yggdrasil]

This Sponge Captures the Teeny Bits of Gold in Electronic Waste

I wonder what you guys think?
Maybe someone wants to homebrew this themselves?


I'm not a chemical or a fire guy, just a packrat learning a lot reading GRF.

I think this one has already been discussed her.
At least something similar.

 

[galenrog]

I think this one has already been discussed her.
At least something similar.

A few years ago. Honestly, there have been several versions of this in the past ten years or so. I am assuming no one has yet scaled this for production.

 

[4metals]

I’m not a tree hugger but this method shows no respect for the innocent shrimp slaughtered to make the chitosan!

Considering typical waste acid after gold precipitation can gold 2 - 3 ppm of Gold this type of sponge could be useful for large producers of gold.

 

[Edlin]

Don’t know about the graphene, but chitosan has been used for some time for industrial waste treatment.

Aerogels are very difficult to manufacture

 

[Martijn]

I think the title is very misleading, this sponge can not capture any gold In E-waste, it can only capture gold that has been dissolved somehow, regardless of the "ore" it came from.
The "E-waste" part only sounds great for tree hugging politicians trading subsidization to companies making "green" solutions. Some truly are great and life altering, most are baked air.