Eco-Friendly Sponges Made of Dairy Byproduct Can Extract Gold from Old Computer Parts

[Michie]

The gold nugget obtained from computer motherboards in three parts. The largest of these parts is around five millimetres wide. (Photograph ETH Zurich Alan Kovacevic)

Scientists have developed a way to dramatically reduce the cost of recycling certain electronic waste by using whey protein.

Their method allows for the easy recovery of gold from circuit boards at a cost of energy and materials amounting to 50 times less than the price of the gold they recover—these are the numbers that big business likes to see.

Indeed, the potential for scalability depends on this sort of cost savings, something traditional e-waste recycling methods just can’t achieve.

Professor Raffaele Mezzenga from ETH Zurich has found that whey protein, a byproduct of dairy manufacturing, can be used to make sponges that attract trace amounts of ionized gold.

Continued below.

Eco-Friendly Sponges Made of Dairy Byproduct Can Extract Gold from Old Computer Parts - Good News Network

The breakthrough is reminiscent of that old fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin who can spin straw into gold, only these scientists use dairy.

www.goodnewsnetwork.org