West Virginia University researchers have developed a way to extract rare, critical minerals from e-waste.
Their goal is to repurpose these useful, in-demand minerals from old electronics to build new technology instead of letting them go to waste in landfills.
As Tech Xplore shared, the researchers use electricity and microwave technology to remove difficult-to-extract minerals like gallium, tantalum, and indium from electronics waste. These minerals are often left behind after standard e-waste recycling methods because they're typically too costly, hazardous, or challenging to extract.
The researchers' new strategy eliminates toxic chemicals from critical mineral extraction for a safer and more affordable approach.
Their work at West Virginia University's Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering involves heating only targeted parts of e-waste to recover valuable metals.
The recycling method involves shredding e-waste and mixing it with materials that trap impurities. Then, they use electromagnetic waves to heat the mixture.
Carbon contained in e-waste's plastics and adhesives becomes rapidly heated and reacts with the critical metals. The heating process allows researchers to separate the critical metals using filters.
"So far, in our laboratory tests, we have successfully recovered about 80% of the gallium, indium and tantalum from e-waste, at purities between 95% and 97%," wrote West Virginia University associate professor Terence Musho for The Conversation. "We have also demonstrated how it can be integrated with existing recycling processes."
This e-waste development is significant because of the world's immense electronic waste issue. Americans alone generate over 2.7 million tons of e-waste annually, while only recycling about 15% of it.
The critical minerals contained in electronics are in high demand, but in the past, it's been challenging to recover them from old devices quickly and affordably.
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The U.S. Department of Defense has been interested in and helped fund the researchers' project because it depends on these metals for various operations. Defense teams use them for nuclear reactors, radar systems, and other technologies.
Fortunately, many research teams are working to tackle our global e-waste problem with revolutionary ideas. Recycling innovations can revolutionize entire industries to improve sustainability and turn waste into valuable products in a circular economy.
The West Virginia researchers working on microwaving e-waste plan to launch large pilot projects to test their methods further. They want to see if their microwaving technology will effectively extract critical metals from LED lighting parts, smartphone circuit boards, and data center server cards.
They aim to recycle tons of e-waste per hour and produce up to 50 pounds of critical minerals per hour from the processing.
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