UK Royal Mint to Extract Gold from e-Waste

newcastlejon writes: The Royal Mint, which has produced coins since the 9th Century, has begun to recover gold from electronic waste as the use of cash has declined and fewer new coins are needed. In 2022 construction began on a new site in Llantrisant, Wales. This facility will now be used to initially produce gold for jewellery and later for commemorative coins.

The BBC writes:

At the Royal Mint plant, piles of circuit boards are being fed into the new facility.

First, they are heated to remove their various components. Then the array of detached coils, capacitors, pins and transistors are sieved, sorted, sliced and diced as they move along a conveyor belt. Anything with gold in it is set aside.

âoeWhat we're doing here is urban mining,â says head of sustainability Inga Doak. âoeWe're taking a waste product that's being produced by society and we're mining the gold from that waste product and starting to see the value in that finite resource.â

The gold-laden pieces go to an on-site chemical plant. Theyâ(TM)re tipped into a chemical solution which leaches the gold out into the liquid. This is then filtered, leaving a powder behind. It looks pretty nondescript but this is actually pure gold â" it just needs to be heated in a furnace to be transformed into a gleaming nugget.

âoeTraditional gold recovery processes are very energy intensive and use very toxic chemicals that can only be used once, or they go to high energy smelters and they're basically burnt,â says Leighton John, the Royal Mint's operations director. âoeThe groundbreaking thing for us is the fact that this chemistry is used at room temperature, at very low energy, itâ(TM)s recyclable and pulls gold really quickly.â