CBS Evening News New process for mining electronic waste could be a gold mine

Freeport, New York — At eWorks in Freeport, New York, piles of dusty televisions, personal computers, printers and other old tech are the start of an electronic treasure hunt.

"There is a value that would be there," eWorks CEO Mark Wilkins told CBS News. "Maybe it's a small value, but it's our job to really go through that process and evaluate each one of those components."

Wilkins' team first tests to see if electronics still work. If not, they are disassembled, because anything with a chip can contain gold, and more than you might think.

And it's not just the gold that can be seen with your eye on circuit boards, but also the minuscule pieces packed inside processors and other components.

Alireza Abbaspourrad, an associate professor of food chemistry and ingredient technology at Cornell University, says there's more gold in a ton of electronic waste than in a ton of ore mined from the earth.

Abbaspourrad explains that about one million used cellphones can produce "something close to 70 to 85 pounds of gold."

But to date, the process has required harmful chemicals like cyanide to filter it out. So, Abbaspourrad and his team at Cornell developed a method they say is more efficient, and which carries less environmental risk. The process uses an organic compound to absorb gold ions like a sponge.

"Our sponge selectively targets only gold, and that's a major difference," Abbaspourrad said.

That gold can then be reused in solar panels, new electronics and possibly even jewelry. Easier and cheaper extraction could boost the financial incentive to safely recycle, and keep toxic metals out of landfills.

A United Nations report released last year found that in 2022, the world generated 62 million tons of electronic waste, such as items like outdated cell phones, and laptops. That marked an 82% increase from just a decade before.

And according to Cornell, global e-waste is expected to grow to 80 million metric tons annually by 2030.

Wilkins and eWorks sees that growing pile as an opportunity. Founded more than a decade ago, the company has created dozens of jobs for employees with disabilities who learn how to hand, sort and take apart old tech.

"Our mission is to provide training, education and employment for people with disabilities," Wilkins said. "So, about 48% of our workforce are people with special needs."

It's a chance to help more people, and the planet, and it is made possible by mining gadgets for gold.

"The process uses an organic compound to absorb gold ions like a sponge."

Red... The organic compound is not named so its hard to assert for certain if it has anything to do with the bacteria. I would note that before the bacteria can excrete the gold, they first had to absorb it along with the copper. They then had some internal organic process to separate the gold and excess copper and excrete these as waste products. (nanometer gold nuggets) Have their scientists developed a chemical process that replicates the uptake side? I can't say.

Slide to this related topic:

Cupriavidus metallidurans: A Modern Alchemist

snip...."Recent discovery on the potential use of a bacterium has revealed that it can yield 24-carat gold in one week. Scientists from Michigan State University, USA, Kazem Kashefi, assistant professor of microbiology and Adam Brown, associate professor of electronic art and intermedia, found that a bacterium, Cupriavidus metallidurans (previously known as Ralstonia metallidurans)
[1] that belongs to beta class of proteobacteria can grow on a substantial concentration of toxic gold chloride (also known as liquid gold). Further reports from Australia have confirmed this microbial process involved in cycling of gold, based on the 99 % similarity of 16S rDNA obtained from template (gold grains) to R. metallidurans
[2]. The bacterium with such potential was first isolated in 1976 from the sludge of a metal processing factory located in Belgium
[3]. Its ability to detoxify gold complexes by transforming them into metallic gold was discovered in 2009
[4]. When discovered, the bacterium was initially found to be resistant to cadmium but subsequent studies identified that this strain is multi-metal resistant and has two plasmids pMOL28 and pMOL30 which harbor multiple loci for metal resistance
[5]. The plasmid pMOL28 contains genes involved in resistance to Co(II), Cr(VI), Hg(II) and Ni(II) which are present on a 34 Kb region, whereas a 132 Kb region on the plasmid pMOL30 contains the genes involved in resistance to the metals Ag(I), Cd(II), Co(II), Cu(II), Hg(II), Pb(II), and Zn(II) [5, 6].
The bacterium’s ability to thrive in toxic environments with a high number of heavy metal resistant genes makes it an excellent model organism to study the means by which microbes deal with heavy metal stress. Such unique ability of this extremophile to metabolize toxic substances might also provide an insight into understanding the origin of life."

... snip

The authors do indicate: "Producing pure gold from bacterium seems to be a boon at a time when the price of gold has reached an all time high. But, does this mean that the scientists have got the answer to the international debt crises? Although this bacterium can produce the 24-carat pure gold, but it has been said that it will be cost prohibitive to carry out this experiment at a larger scale."

The study scientists were working with a controlled process and a uniform metallic solution. This would not apply to the IT Waste, which would presumably be separated from their mounting boards, ground, and be in some sort of liquid suspension. At some point there might be more information.