G8 Initiative: Catalysing the growth in metal recovery

1256286 (Graedel)。美国国家科学基金会的这项奖励资助美国研究人员参加由八国集团研究委员会倡议通过竞争方式选出的项目。该计划是由美国国家科学基金会、加拿大国家科学与工程研究委员会（NSERC）、法国国家研究局（ANR）、德国德国科学促进会（DFG）、日本科学促进会（JSPS）、俄罗斯基础研究基金会（RFBR）和英国研究委员会（RCUK）合作完成的。支持在竞争基础上选出的由至少三个伙伴国家的研究人员组成的合作研究项目。气候变化和石油峰值问题越来越频繁地成为头条新闻，人们正在寻求减少对石油依赖的解决方案。当新技术解决一个挑战时，由于资源短缺而产生的其他挑战。许多低碳技术，包括风力涡轮机、电动汽车和催化转换器，都需要前所未有的贵金属，威胁到它们的持续可用性。这些元素分散在我们的环境中，使它们成本高昂，难以回收。这强调了一种新的金属捕获和利用方法的必要性，从而增加了我们储备的寿命。该项目将探索将这一愿景变为现实的新方向。初步研究表明，植物能够将铂族金属（PGM）矿化，形成稳定的金属纳米颗粒，这些纳米颗粒在各种重要的工业反应中都很活跃。我们打算利用矿山废弃物通过植物床进行金属吸附。由此产生的植物将受到受控热解，以产生具有稳定的PGM纳米颗粒的材料，用作负载催化剂。这为金属耗竭的国际问题提供了一个有效的解决方案，并将导致开发一系列新的天然衍生催化剂。项目合作者包括一个多学科小组，其中包括下列基本专门知识：不列颠哥伦比亚大学矿物、金属和材料环境研究中心，该中心将收集关于铂族金属矿体世界分布的资料，提供尾矿和成分分析。约克大学的绿色化学卓越中心和新型农产品中心将对催化剂的植物生长、表征和应用进行研究。最后，耶鲁大学林业与环境研究学院将进行生命周期、经济和社会评估，以确定该项目将对更广泛的世界产生什么影响。

1256286 (Graedel). This NSF award funds U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a G8 Research Council Initiative. The Initiative is a collaboration among the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Canadian National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), the German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), and the United Kingdom Research Councils (RCUK), supporting collaborative research projects selected on a competitive basis that are comprised of researchers from at least three of the partner countries. Climate change and peak oil issues have been making headlines with increasing frequency and solutions are being sought to lessen dependence on oil. As new technologies tackle one challenge, other challenges are created through resource deficit. Many low carbon technologies including wind turbines, electric cars and catalytic converters require precious metals in unprecedented quantities threatening their continued availability. These elements are being dispersed throughout our environment, making them costly and difficult to recover. This emphasizes the necessity for a new approach to metal capture and use, thus increasing the lifetime of our reserves. This project will investigate a new direction for turning this vision into reality. Initial studies indicate that plants are capable of phytomining platinum group metals (PGM) to form stable metal nanoparticles that are active in a variety of industrially important reactions. We intend to utilize mine wastes to pass through plant beds for metal adsorption. The resulting plants will be subjected to controlled pyrolysis to yield a material with stabilized nanoparticles of PGM for use as supported catalysts. This offers an effective solution to an international problem of metal depletion and will lead to the development of a new range of naturally derived catalysts. Project collaborators consist of a multidisciplinary team that incorporate the following essential expertise: The Centre for Environmental Research in Minerals, Metals and Materials at University of British Columbia, who will gather information on worldwide distributions of PGM ore bodies, provide mine tailing and compositional analysis. The Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence and Centre for Novel Agricultural Products at the University of York will carry out the research into the plant growth, characterization and application of the catalysts. Finally, the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies will carry out life cycle, economical and societal assessment to determine what impact the project will have on the wider world.