High Efficiency Precious Metals Recovery from E-waste

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The aim of this project is to both shorten the supply chain and halve the overall losses of precious metals (PM) during their recovery from e-waste. This project will enable the UK to disrupt this inefficient chain and create an indigenous business, leading to self-sufficiency, from an estimated 400k tpa e-waste arising. The project represents a route to achieving the missing links in the circular economy business model based on the existing pure metal to product recycling industry. This will be achieved through the combined partners’ expertise in waste collection and sorting; smelting based efficiency PM recovery and refining. Novelty is both commercial, in the integrated business approach, and technical in the use of a copper-based recovery process, instead of the iron-based process used for high efficiency PM recovery from catalysts. This programme aims to develop a sustainable process for maximising the value of PM recovery by the development of novel waste processing technologies, with higher recovery efficiencies and lower environmental impacts, complimentary to the trend in commerce to move away from ownership to service-based models, with life cycle material management.