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

拟议的研究计划旨在为开发从电子废物中提取有价值金属的环保技术奠定科学基础。由于计算机和移动的电话的寿命相对较短，电子废物或废弃的电子设备和电气设备近年来变得不成比例地丰富。由于大多数电子废物产生于北美、欧洲、澳大拉西亚和日本，目前全球电子废物的产量估计约为每年2500万吨。随着中国和拉丁美洲迅速成为主要的电子废物生产国，每年的生产量只会增加。电子废物含有一系列金属，包括铂、金、银、铜、钯和稀土金属，其中大部分目前被填埋，可能产生长期的环境问题。另一方面，电子废物金属的回收除了对环境有益之外，由于金属的低天然浓度导致每单位重量的更大价值，因此在经济上具有吸引力。然而，电子废物中的有价值金属主要以元素而不是氧化物或硫化物的形式存在;在计算机和移动的电话等许多情况下，它们分散在无机和有机材料的复杂基质中。传统的冶金技术根本不足以以经济可行和环境友好的方式从电子废物中提取金属，因为它们是为提取大量成分一致的金属而开发的。 因此，需要新的冶金技术，以最小的成本和环境影响从电子废物中回收金属。 拟议的研究通过探索自然生物和大有机分子在从电子废物中选择性提取金属方面的潜力来满足这一需求。

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.