Wee granule has a way with WEEE

THERE'S NO LONGER such a need to feel guilty about your dumping habits, thanks to a miraculous new absorbent technology developed by Japanese boffins.

A heroic team of researchers at the University of Miyazaki has developed a new kind of wonder granule that has a knack for reclaiming precious metals. According to a story at subscription-based Nikkei.net, the absorbent material can extract precious metals from discarded electronic components ten times as quickly as any previous technology.

Here’s the science bit. The granules are based on multiporous microgranules of chitosan. Yes, the same chitosan that comes from crustacean shells. So we’ve got the crabs to thank for sifting gold from old circuitry. You really can make gold from an old motherboard.

The granules sift gold, platinum and palladium from a solution of hydrochloric acid, leaving other metals behind in the acid bath. Once it is taken out of the bath and placed in a solution of thiourea, the granules release their content of precious metals for recovery.

The microgranules are about 200 microns with pores that are 3-5 microns in diameter. The granules are mixed with sulphur atoms and the resultant compound is geared toward absorbing precious metals

In a demonstration a tenth of a gram of the wee granules took less than 10 minutes to recover the palladium from a concentrate of 50 parts per million in 100cc of hydrochloric acid.

But, say the Japanese boffins, that represents between ten and a hundredfold improvements in absorbtion speed over the polystyrene-based materials used to recycle precious metals now.

They reckon there’ll be a commercial product available in two years. So you’ll just have to store all your old components in the loft until then. µ