E-waste Recycling Process Garners Grant and Finalist Status in Royal Society of Chemistry Environment Awards

On August 3, 2022 the University of Leicester reported:

“An electronic waste-recycling process that’s kinder to the planet – and uses pioneering technology developed at the University of Leicester – has attracted a £1.2m grant and national awards recognition Recycling e-waste, such as discarded mobile phones, laptops and anything with an electronic circuit board, can cause significant environmental problems. This is because the critical metals in circuit boards are difficult to recycle, with the process requiring large and expensive, polluting, smelting facilities. New alternative chemistry based techniques are on the horizon, but the vast majority of these require the use of highly dangerous acids and oxidisers that are consumed in the process and need replacing on a regular basis, meaning more transport of hazardous materials on the roads and a high CO2 footprint which comes from the necessary neutralisation of these chemicals after their use. But, there’s a potentially zero-carbon, clean chemical solution, based on the environmentally-benign Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES) – a class of chemistry developed by Leicester scientists in the early 2000s. The DES recycling process sees the solvents dissolve the target metals into a solution without the need for toxic chemicals or high temperatures. The solution is also not consumed within the process and can itself be recycled and used again...UK-based company Descycle, is using the DES chemistry to develop a commercially viable recycling plant that will be hosted by Descycle’s joint venture partners Gap Group…Descycle is also working with waste company GAP, to build a waste electrical and electronic equipment recycling facility in the north-east of England, which uses DES chemistry. Descycle’s Chief Technology Officer is Dr Rob Harris, who is also a researcher at the University and is working on making the technology commercially viable. The work he and Descycle are carrying out has attracted the attention of judges at the highly competitive Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Emerging Technologies Competition, which received applications from all over the globe, and were shortlisted for the Environment award. Hot on the heels of the shortlisting, comes the news that Dr Harris and Descycle have also secured a Future Leaders Fellowship from the UKRI’s flagship scheme to continue development of the e-waste and other metals recycling and recovery processes using the technology.”

Read the full article from the University of Leicester at https://le.ac.uk/news/2022/august/ewaste-award.

Researchers Propose Method to Choose More Sustainable Nanomaterials

From the May 1, 2018 edition of Science Daily:  “Engineered nanomaterials hold great promise for medicine, electronics, water treatment, and other fields. But when the materials are designed without critical information about environmental impacts at the start of the process, their long-term effects could undermine those advances. A team of researchers hopes to change that.

In a study published in Nature Nanotechnology, Yale researchers outline a strategy to give materials designers the tools they need to make the necessary assessments efficiently and at the beginning of the design process. Engineers traditionally focus on the function and cost of their products. Without the information to consider long-term environmental impacts, though, it is difficult to predict adverse effects. That lack of information means that unintended consequences often go unnoticed until long after the product has been commercialized. This can lead to hastily replacing the material with another that proves to have equally bad, or even worse, effects. Having materials property information at the start of the design process could change that pattern. “As a researcher, if I have limited resources for research and development, I don’t want to spend it on something that’s not going to be viable due to its effects on human health,” said Julie Zimmerman, professor of chemical & environmental engineering and co-senior author of the study. “I want to know now, before I develop that product.” To that end, the researchers have developed a database that serves as a screening tool for environmentally sustainable material selection. It’s a chart that lists nanomaterials and assesses each for properties such as size, shape, and such performance characteristics as toxicity and antimicrobial activity. Mark Falinski, a PhD student and lead author of the study, said this information would allow researchers to weigh the different effects of the material before actually developing it.”

The database created by the research team also allows other researchers to enter information to improve the material selection framework. It includes engineered nanomaterials and conventional alternatives with human health and environmental metrics for all materials.

The research team includes scientists affiliated with Yale University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, City University of Hong Kong, and the University of Pittsburgh.

Image of three different illustrations of nanoscale materials: white crystals, pyramidal dark crystals joined together, and a tubular mesh-like formation of molecules
Researchers propose a new method for nanomaterial selection that incorporates environmental and functional performance, as well as cost. Credit: Steve Geringer.

Read the full story in Science Daily at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180501161754.htm.

Read the referenced article in Nature Nanotechnology at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-018-0120-4.  [Mark M. Falinski, Desiree L. Plata, Shauhrat S. Chopra, Thomas L. Theis, Leanne M. Gilbertson, Julie B. Zimmerman. A framework for sustainable nanomaterial selection and design based on performance, hazard, and economic considerationsNature Nanotechnology, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41565-018-0120-4]

To learn more about the potential environmental and health impacts of nanotechnology, see the following:

Further Developments in E-Waste Recycling

In a previous post, we discussed how researchers at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed an energy-efficient, non-toxic, nondestructive chemical process to recover polymers from the complex plastic blends found in items like cellphone cases.

But that’s not the only exciting news this Earth Month related to innovations in reclaiming materials from electronic scrap (commonly referred to as “e-waste”). In a GreenBiz article dated 4/18/18, Heather Clancy highlights an electrochemical process developed by Canadian venture EnviroLeach Technologies, which is similar to the conventional method of leaching gold and other metals out of ores, concentrates and tailings. The difference is that “instead of using cyanide, the patent-pending formula uses five non-toxic, FDA-approved ingredients that are combined with water at ambient temperatures.’The process does not require pressure, elevated temperatures, complex process circuits, intensive gas monitoring or costly detoxification systems,’ explained EnviroLeach on its website.” Read the full story on the GreenBiz web site. You can also check out the EnviroLeach web site for further information. This development is particularly encouraging considering a recent article from Environmental Leader reporting that n a study by researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing and Macquarie University in Australia, which suggests extracting metals from e-waste costs 13 times less than mining ore. Perhaps the new process will make the economic benefit even more striking, while minimizing environmental impacts.

Elsewhere in Canada, researchers at the University of British Columbia “have perfected a process to efficiently separate fibreglass and resin – two of the most commonly discarded parts of a cellphone – bringing them closer to their goal of a zero-waste cellphone.” As UBC News reports, “Most e-waste recycling firms focus on recovering useful metals like gold, silver, copper and palladium, which can be used to manufacture other products. But nonmetal parts like fibreglass and resins, which make up the bulk of cellphones’ printed circuit boards, are generally discarded because they’re less valuable and more difficult to process. They’re either fed to incinerators or become landfill, where they can leach hazardous chemicals into groundwater, soil and air.” But UBC mining engineering professor Maria Holuszko, along with PhD student Amit Kumar, has developed a process using gravity separation “and other simple phycial techniques to process cellphone fibreglass and resins in an environmentally neutral fashion.” The next step in pursuing this innovation is developing a large-scale commercial model of the process with their industrial partner and recycling company Ronin8. Read the full UBC article on the UBC News web site.

Read more at https://ifixit.org/recycling on why electronics recycling, though of course important, should not be considered the answer to the problem of ever-growing amounts of e-waste, due to the difficulty in reclaiming materials (eased slowly by new innovations like the ones described above) and energy use. While these developments in electronic scrap recycling are heartening, it’s important to remember to keep your electronics in service as long as possible through repair and upgrades, and when you no longer want or need a functioning device, sell or donate it so someone else can use it. Recycling should only come at the ultimate end of a device’s useful life.

ISTC Researchers Tap Problematic E-waste Surplus to Recover High-quality Polymers

Two smiling men stand in a laboratory
Illinois Sustainability Technology Center researchers B.K. Sharma, left, and Sriraam Chandrasekaran have developed the first energy-efficient and environmentally benign e-waste recycling process.
Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

Mixed-plastic electronics waste could be a valuable source of reusable polymers, a new study led by Illinois Sustainability Technology Center (ISTC) scientists suggests. The team’s findings, published in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, are the first to demonstrate a nontoxic, nondestructive and energy-efficient chemical solvent process to recover polymers from the complex plastic blends found in items like like cellphone cases.

HOBI International, Inc. and the ISTC Hazardous Waste Research Fund supported this research. The ISTC is part of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois.

Read more about this cutting edge project on the University of Illinois News Bureau web site.

See also the ACS News Service Weekly PressPac: March 14, 2018: An eco-friendly alternative to recycling e-waste.

Learn more about the researchers on their ISTC staff pages:

 

 

Green Chemistry and Biomimicry: A More Sustainable Process for Metal Extraction

A team of chemists from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and Western University in London, Ontario, Canada, have developed a way to process metals without toxic solvents and reagents. Their innovation could help reduce negative environmental impacts of metal extraction from raw materials and electronic scrap.

As reported by McGill, “The system, which also consumes far less energy than conventional techniques, could greatly shrink the environmental impact of producing metals from raw materials or from post-consumer electronics…In an article published recently in Science Advances, the researchers outline an approach that uses organic molecules, instead of chlorine and hydrochloric acid, to help purify germanium, a metal used widely in electronic devices. Laboratory experiments by the researchers have shown that the same technique can be used with other metals, including zinc, copper, manganese and cobalt.”

The development is an interesting example of biomimicry. Germanium is a semiconductor not found in substantial quantities in any one type of ore, so a series of processes are used to reduce mined materials with small quantities of the metal to a mixture of germanium and zinc. Isolation of germanium from the zinc in this resulting mixture involves what one of the researchers called “nasty processes.” For an alternative less dependent upon toxic materials and energy use, the researchers found inspiration in melanin, the pigment molecule present in skin, hair, and irises of humans and other animals. Besides contribution to coloration, melanin can bind to metals. The researchers synthesized a molecule that mimics some of melanin’s metal-binding qualities. Using it they were able to isolate germanium from zinc at room temperature, without solvents.

Image of a shiny, silver-grey metallic rock
Image of germanium by W. Oelen, CC BY 3.0

As the McGill article states, “The next step in developing the technology will be to show that it can be deployed economically on industrial scales, for a range of metals.”

Read the full story, published June 7, 2017 by the McGill Newsroom at https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/more-sustainable-way-refine-metals-268517.

See also “A chlorine-free protocol for processing germanium,” Martin Glavinović et al., Science Advances, 5 May 2017. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1700149 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/5/e1700149

To learn more about germanium and its applications (including fiber-optics, infrared optics, solar electric applications, and LEDs), see the Wikipedia article on germanium at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanium.