Probing Organometallic Bonds and Selective Biosorption for Metal Recovery from Electronic Waste

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The proposed research program aims to lay a scientific foundation for the development of environmentally friendly technologies for extracting valuable metals from e-waste. Due to the relatively short lifespans of computers and mobile phones, e-waste, or discarded electronic devices and electrical equipment, has become disproportionately abundant in recent years. With most e-waste being generated in North America, Europe, Australasia and Japan, the current global production of e-waste is estimated to be about 25 million tonnes per annum. As China and Latin America are rapidly becoming major e-waste producers, the amount of produced per year will only increase. E-waste contains an array of metals including platinum, gold, silver, copper, palladium, and rare earth metals, most of which is currently disposed in landfills, possibly engendering long-term environmental problems. On the other hand, the recovery of e-waste metals, in addition to being environmentally beneficial, is economically attractive due to the metals' low natural concentrations resulting in greater value per unit weight. However, the valuable metals within e-waste exist largely as elements instead of oxides or sulfides; in many cases such as computers and mobile phones, they are dispersed in complex matrices of inorganic and organic materials. Traditional metallurgical technologies are fundamentally inadequate to extract metals from e-waste in an economically viable and environmentally friendly manner, as they were developed for extracting large metallic quantities of consistent composition. Thus, new metallurgical technologies that recover metals from e-waste with minimal cost and environmental impact are needed. The proposed research answers this need by exploring the potential of natural organisms and large organic molecules in the selective extraction of metals from e-waste.