There's treasure in trash — literally. Discarded computers, circuit boards, and other electronic waste contain valuable metals like gold. Now, breakthrough research could make extracting gold easier and cleaner.
A study by Flinders University unveiled a new process that can recover high-purity gold from both ore and electronic waste.
The process uses a disinfectant called trichloroisocyanuric acid, commonly used in water sanitation.
When activated with salt water, it becomes powerful enough to dissolve gold without the need for mercury or cyanide. Then, a custom polymer sorbent binds the extracted gold and separates it from other metals and waste. The process does not rely on toxic substances.
"It is increasingly important to develop safe and versatile methods to purify gold from varying sources," said Dr. Lynn Lisboa, one of the lead authors of the study.
What makes this discovery especially promising is that the polymer binding the gold can be reused. Once it collects the gold, it's triggered to "unmake" itself, allowing both the gold and polymer to be recovered and recycled. This closed-loop design helps prevent waste while reducing the cost of materials needed for future recovery.
Gold is essential in electronics, medicine, and the aerospace industry. But traditional extraction releases enormous amounts of toxic mercury and cyanide, especially from small-scale mining, which emits over 2,000 tons of mercury every year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
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WWF reported that cyanide spills have led to fish kills and long-term ecosystem damage, like what happened in the Tisza River system in 2000.
As e-waste continues to pile up globally, old electronics, such as phones and laptops, often end up in landfills, leaking harmful chemicals into the environment. By making gold recovery safer and more efficient, the new technique from Flinders University offers a cleaner way to handle discarded electronic materials.
The research team is now working with recyclers and miners to scale the technology. Similar efforts are underway in Switzerland, where researchers are also using food by-products such as whey to recover gold from circuit boards.
Innovations like these highlight how circular economy thinking — recovering valuable materials from the products we discard — can help reduce e-waste, support cleaner production, and lower the need for resource-intensive mining.
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