[HN Gopher] Royal Mint to build 'world first' plant to turn UK's...
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Royal Mint to build 'world first' plant to turn UK's electronic
waste into gold
Author : TangerineDream
Score : 52 points
Date : 2022-03-22 14:11 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.royalmint.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.royalmint.com)
| sgt wrote:
| How many retro computers or interesting old hardware will be
| lost? I hope they have some kind of rudimentary sorting to detect
| old hardware that may be of interest to collectors.
| jcadam wrote:
| The VESA local bus is dead, let it go...
| Symbiote wrote:
| Unlikely, similar to anything else you throw in the recycling
| bin.
| zahllos wrote:
| Aside from electronic waste, if you ever happen to be in South
| Wales you can visit the Royal Mint and it is quite fascinating.
|
| They strike coins not just for the UK but also quite a few other
| nations. They also make the precursor alloy mixes for quite a few
| more nations, who then only do the striking part for their
| national currency. All in all, there is a possibility your
| nation's coins may have in part been made there.
|
| The exhibition they have explains it better than I can and you
| can see out onto part of the factory floor. I also got to strike
| a coin... Well... The machine struck it but I pressed "please
| strike it". So. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon if you are
| there.
| kieloo wrote:
| Do you know what nations they mint coins for? I can't seem to
| find that information.
| humanwhosits wrote:
| > but also quite a few other nations
|
| That's a surprising amount of trust
| dankboys wrote:
| If they can provide better anti-forgery protections then why
| not?
| themihai wrote:
| one reason would be the UK dumping forged money perhaps
| through 3rd parties? (i.e. like the Switzerland sold
| compromised crypto machines)
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| I don't think any amount of coin 'forgery' the UK could
| possible achieve would be worth the effort, let alone the
| reputational cost when discovered.
| pintxo wrote:
| What happens when the trust was not worth it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alves_dos_Reis
| Symbiote wrote:
| Another British company makes banknotes for "over 69 national
| currencies" [1].
|
| From the website [2] I can see England, Gibraltar,
| Seychelles, Macedonia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Solomon Islands,
| Thailand, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Fiji, Sao Tome e Principe, ...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_La_Rue
|
| [2] https://www.delarue.com/currency/overview?hsLang=en-gb
| wcoenen wrote:
| There may be something new about the process here, but there are
| other processing plants that recover gold from e-waste. Umicore
| has a plant in Belgium which does this.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Do you know much about the process in Belgium? I've been trying
| to learn more about proper handling of e-waste in the country;
| there's not much information available. The companies I know
| just chuck it in the all-purpose bin with batteries removed.
| rapnie wrote:
| See video link in my other comment. It highlights Umicore in
| Belgium and films their process (dating 2015). You may find
| some details on their site.
|
| https://www.umicore.com/en/about/recycling/
| jotm wrote:
| And still ship the leftover waste to poor countries? Whenever I
| read "circular economy" I want to smash my head into a wall.
|
| Just so you understand where that's coming from: I worked for one
| of the largest appliance recycling companies in the UK.
|
| I watched as hundreds of thousands of perfectly good spare parts
| were thrown away and like 80% of the incoming shipments being
| reshipped to India and Africa. They did resell whole appliances
| for seemingly unprofitable prices, though. Several flooded flats
| and even electrical fires because of piss poor testing.
|
| I watched as people were poisoned (lead from CRTs, whatever the
| fuck is in fridge lining and compressors) in their factory
| because of extremely poor H&S. Actually, was affected myself, now
| I have to beg for a very simple medicine for the rest of my life.
|
| I watched as people were fired on the spot after getting in
| accidents (due to said poor H&S) and got zero compensation.
|
| They were dumping toxic chemicals in the local sewage system
| while getting 4-5 star ratings from the environment agency.
|
| Ran by greedy, dumb management, I swear the company exists just
| to get government funding instead of actually being useful or
| turning a profit.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Nothing really new.. I've seen this happening 20 years ago at
| smaller scale.
|
| Problem is these people often dumped every other natural resource
| that was not worth as much.. I hope that won't happen here. Edit:
| According to the article they will recycle less popular elements
| as well. I hope so...
| rwmj wrote:
| I distinctly remember a TV programme from the 1980s which
| mentioned the large gold content (probably larger back then) of
| electronics and how companies were recycling it. Nothing new at
| all.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It definitely was larger yes. Almost every contact was gold-
| plated back then. And thicker too.
|
| Part of this was necessity, due to everything being analog
| signal noise ratios were a lot more important. Gold stops
| contacts from oxidising. But electronics are also produced in
| a much more minimalist way, both to conserve cost and
| materials (these being good things) but also because they
| don't care if it lasts beyond the warranty period. The latter
| is obviously a bad thing. In the 1980s if your TV broke you'd
| go to a repairman, you wouldn't buy a new one. It's kind of
| crazy how we've come to accept electronics only lasting 2-3
| years.
| rapnie wrote:
| Do we really have a 'world first' here? I remember seeing a
| "Backlight" documentary on Dutch TV on the subject of Urban
| Mining [0] in 2015.
|
| [0] https://yewtu.be/watch?v=kxlmTRWeppM
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I think the "world first" here is that a national Mint is going
| to use the process to recover precious metals. AFICT, Britain's
| Royal Mint is the only first world Mint actively pursuing e-waste
| and precious metal recovery.
|
| The process is not exactly novel as it's done all around the
| world, but the key point here may be the "chemistry" that it will
| use. That makes me think of some type of dissolving solution that
| frees the metal to then be collected electromechanically.
| dghughes wrote:
| Gold is probably the least valuable metal in electronics there
| are many more that are more expensive and useful.
| nly wrote:
| Then Royal Mint already have everything in place to monetize
| the Gold though, so it's hardly surprising it's priority. This
| is also a pretty shrewd ESG play - in the future more Gold can
| be included in to ESG funds because it's not being mined in
| say...China and Russia, the worlds top 2 producers.
| loufe wrote:
| True, but the release did say they are recovering all precious
| metals, not just gold.
| amelius wrote:
| There's also aluminum which is less expensive.
| ben_bai wrote:
| Gold might be a key metal for the future, unless the costs
| prohibit it.
|
| For example Palladium-Gold catalysts (CO2 reduction) or nano
| particle gold plating (PV solar) or AuNPs (medical)
| agumonkey wrote:
| I think he meant market-value. Some guy at a landfill
| explained to me that SMD caps were a lot better.
| [deleted]
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| This is off topic, but I'm deeply curious what a plant to recycle
| lithium batteries looks like.
|
| I believe they'd be handling almost every form of matter, from
| solid lithium to liquid electolyte, the combustion gasses of bad
| batteries blowing up, and the plasma of the fire itself.
|
| Seems like a hell of a challenge and I'd love to hear all about
| it.
|
| (extracting gold is simpler, by comparison, and can be done at
| home by the sufficiently motivated-
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASQCa7mfjVo)
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| This might help:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6mIKytM5BM&ab_channel=Busin...
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Awesome! but they keep the interesting part secret (how to
| prevent fires during the actual recycling, how to deal with a
| plant that handles bombs before they are in the recycling
| process itself)
| kderbyma wrote:
| Definitely not a world first. interesting - Europol had a
| crackdown on the ewaste market a few years back
| sschueller wrote:
| Switzerland does something similar with what is left after
| trash has been burned. It is against the law for the left over
| ash (schlake) to contain more than 1% of metal.
|
| Therefore they extract it and sell it making a profit.
|
| https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/redirect/detail/d8f14e5f-c921-446...
| (Swiss German)
| pjc50 wrote:
| Trying to find some background on "Excir", the company whose
| technology is being used, and they've been on Dragons Den!
| https://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/m_pitches/excir-works
|
| https://www.cheminst.ca/magazine/article/saskatchewan-chemis...
|
| And these appear to be their patents for the leachant:
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180112289A1/en
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180142322A1/en
|
| TLDR rather than traditional high-temperature or extremely acidic
| solvents, they have a room-temperature gold-specific solvent.
|
| I'd still like a little more detail about how the process works;
| how do they delaminate boards? What happens to the tin solder,
| the FR4, and other bits and pieces?
| nebula8804 wrote:
| From what I understand(and someone can correct me if I am
| wrong), FR4 is an epoxy material that cannot really be broken
| down so what is done is that the boards are ground up and then
| the copper is extracted from the powder. Not sure what happens
| to the rest.
|
| [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_LPejkU8rE
| latchkey wrote:
| "Sorry, this content is not available in your region."
|
| Hops on vpn to Canada, reloads page, watches cool 4 year old
| video. CBC serves me some ads and gets another MAU.
|
| I wish I felt like I was doing something bad.
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(page generated 2022-03-22 23:01 UTC)