Changing trash into gold | Fusion - WeRIndia

Since the beginnings of human history, people have been using gold for many different things.

Since this shiny yellow metal is both rare and appealing, it has often been used as currency or as a measure of value.

However, in more recent times, gold has begun to be used for other purposes as well. Gold has been used in medicines and even in cooking, but perhaps its most interesting use is in electronic devices.

Gold is an excellent conductor, and it is resistant to oxidation and corrosion in varying environments.

Therefore, it is commonly used in laptops, digital cameras, and smartphones.

However, most of this gold goes to waste when people throw out their broken electronics.

Until now, no one has been able to find a way to recover it.

People have proposed methods for extracting gold from electronic waste such as solvent extraction, ion exchange, and flotation.

However, all of these methods have many disadvantages, such as high reagent requirements and the high usage of toxic chemicals.

Therefore, an alternative extraction method was developed by Bharat C.

Choudhary, Amulrao U. Borse, Debajyoti Paul, and Dipak J. Garole. Their method uses the leaves of Lagerstroemia speciosa, or the “Pride Of India”, to extract gold from electronic waste.

The leaves are mixed with Polyethyleneimine (PEI) to form a bio-solvent, which is used to extract the metal.

First, the leaves of Lagerstroemia speciosa are washed, dried, and powdered.

Next, they are mixed with PEI to increase absorption and prevent leaching.

This creates a bio-solvent. The electronic waste is given various acidic treatments.

This creates an acid-leached gold solution. The acidic gold solution is mixed with the bio-solvent.

After that, the gold is recovered from the bio-solvent using various eluting agents.

This method extracts about 96.9% of the gold retrieved from the bio-solvent.

Thus, these four Indians have developed an environmentally-friendly and low-cost way to extract gold from electronic waste.

This method can also be used to extract gold from jewelry polishing water or gold mine wastewater, allowing people to be much more efficient with one of the most precious materials on Earth.

Image Reference: Thebetterindia