While he hasnt changed one chemical element into gold as alchemists dreamed, he has successfully drawn out gold from electronic waste using a by-product of the cheesemaking process.Electronic waste includes a range of valuable metals, consisting of copper, cobalt, and even considerable amounts of gold. Now, a group led by ETH Professor Mezzenga has actually come up with a very efficient, cost-efficient, and above all far more sustainable approach: with a sponge made from a protein matrix, the researchers have actually effectively extracted gold from electronic waste.Selective gold adsorptionTo manufacture the sponge, Mohammad Peydayesh, a senior scientist in Mezzengas Group, and his colleagues denatured whey proteins under high temperatures and acidic conditions, so that they aggregated into protein nanofibrils in a gel. They liquified these parts in an acid bath so as to ionize the metals.How the gold is recovered: Gold ions adhere to a sponge of protein fibrils. The nugget was 91 percent gold (the rest being copper), which corresponds to 22 carats.Economically viableThe new technology is commercially practical, as Mezzengas estimations show: procurement expenses for the source products added to the energy expenses for the whole process are 50 times lower than the value of the gold that can be recovered.Next, the scientists desire to develop the technology to ready it for the market.
While he hasnt altered one chemical aspect into gold as alchemists dreamed, he has successfully drawn out gold from electronic waste utilizing a byproduct of the cheesemaking process.Electronic waste consists of a variety of valuable metals, including copper, cobalt, and even substantial amounts of gold. Now, a group led by ETH Professor Mezzenga has actually come up with a very efficient, cost-efficient, and above all far more sustainable technique: with a sponge made from a protein matrix, the researchers have successfully drawn out gold from electronic waste.Selective gold adsorptionTo make the sponge, Mohammad Peydayesh, a senior scientist in Mezzengas Group, and his colleagues denatured whey proteins under high temperatures and acidic conditions, so that they aggregated into protein nanofibrils in a gel. They liquified these parts in an acid bath so as to ionize the metals.How the gold is recovered: Gold ions adhere to a sponge of protein fibrils.
