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Submission + - Scientists Synthesized Metallic Nitrogen (eurekalert.org)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: A team of scientists from China, US, and UK successfully turned nitrogen, the dominant gas in Earth's atmosphere, into a metallic fluid when subjected to the extreme pressure and temperature conditions found deep inside the Earth and other planets. Their findings are published by Nature Communications . "Our findings could inform the efforts to create forms of energetic nitrogen polymers as well as superconducting, metallic states of a sister diatomic molecule, hydrogen or H2, which could revolutionize the energy sector if reliably synthesized,” according to team member Nicholas Holtgrewe. The project was funded by by the (US) National Science Foundation, the (US) Army Research Office, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Academy of Science, the British Council Researcher Links Programme, and other sources.

Submission + - E-Waste Mining Could Be Big Business, Good For the Planet (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Professor Veena Sahajwalla's mine in Australia produces gold, silver and copper — and there isn't a pick-axe in sight. Her "urban mine" at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) is extracting these materials not from rock, but from electronic gadgets. The Sydney-based expert in materials science reckons her operation will become efficient enough to be making a profit within a couple of years. "Economic modeling shows the cost of around $500,000 Australian dollars for a micro-factory pays off in two to three years, and can generate revenue and create jobs," she says. "That means there are environmental, social and economic benefits." In fact, research indicates that such facilities can actually be far more profitable than traditional mining.

According to a study published recently in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, a typical cathode-ray tube TV contains about 450g of copper and 227g of aluminium, as well as around 5.6g of gold. While a gold mine can generate five or six grammes of the metal per tonne of raw material, that figure rises to as much as 350g per tonne when the source is discarded electronics. The figures emerged in a joint study from Beijing's Tsinghua University and Macquarie University, in Sydney, where academics examined data from eight recycling companies in China to work out the cost for extracting these metals from electronic waste.

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