French scientists transform H20 into gold
Scientists from France’s Ecole Polytechnique have developed a remarkable new technology which extracts trace amounts of gold from industrial waste water.
Fairfax reports that the new technology was first developed in 2007, and involves the use of tiny pellets of resin which adhere to precious metals such as gold, platinum, palladium and rhodium, enabling them to be separated from the water.
The process can also be used to remove toxic metals such as lead, mercury, copper, cobalt and uranium.
The new technology is expected to enjoy widespread application in the retrieval of precious metals from discarded hi-tech devices such as mobile phones and catalytic converters, as well as the processing and sanitization of waste water.
French start-up Magpie Polymers is now in the process of commercializing the technology, and expects to receive a boost from both the rising price of gold and the introduciton of more stringent environmental regulations which require the removal of harmful metals.
Key markets will be refiners that specialize in precious metal recovery, mining groups, and large-scale water treatment companies.
Magpie was founded last year and currently has six staff. The company expects turn over of one million euros next year and 15 million euros in four years.
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5 Comments
george
It’s about ion exchange, an old procedure; to make a resin selective for an ion one can modify the characteristics of the solution. The guys have (probably) developed a high-selective ion exchange resin, with new functional groups. The main problem here is the elution of ions after the capture in beads.
rockpicker1
Only one thing wrong with this. Dow Chemical has had it for years. I purchased 2 cubic feet back in 2004 and it works depending on the type of leach you use.
Krusty1234
They’re going to need to make this work especially when the Central and German Banks are asked to produce their physical gold…
harderm
How selective are these resins? In other words, can they be made to bind PGMs in preference to Ni, Fe, and Cu? Au in preference to Cu?
geobob
There is no news in the fact that heavy metals exist in industrial waste water, as many hydrologic studies of contaminated sediment and ground water down-gradient from sewage and waste water treatment plants have demonstated that connection. Most urban creeks are loaded with discarded stuff …. most of which has trace levels of some toxic metal in it, even a few ppb Au in any recently-manufactured electronics. The world makes one billion cell phones per year, each one with about 50c worth of gold, and hardly any are recycled.
The “remarkable new technology” by the EP scientists is only remarkable IF the metal extraction is more efficient than current technologies, many of which also rely on synthetic resins to absorb the metals. You can buy these resins from Calgon, Dow, Monsanto and other chem companies who will be happy to give you any gold (plus a lot more lead, arsenic, copper, chromium etc) they extract from the used resin beads, minus the cost of the resins and reprocessing to recover the metals. Both the fresh resins and their processing are expensive. (Hint: your “proceeds” will have a negative in front of the $.)