search
Homeweb3.0The Royal Mint opens factory to extract gold from old computers and phones

The facility provides a sustainable source of precious metals and reduces reliance on mining.

The Royal Mint opens factory to extract gold from old computers and phones

The Royal Mint has opened a new factory to extract gold from old computers and phones and turn it into jewellery and collectables.

The facility will provide a sustainable source of precious metals and reduce reliance on mining.

Up to 4,000 tonnes of printed circuit boards (PCBs) from e-waste like old laptops and TVs will be processed by The Royal Mint per year. It takes around 600 mobile phones to create one of the rings from the Mint’s 886 collection, weighing approximately 7.5g – similar to the weight of a £1 coin.

Some 4,000 tonnes of circuit boards contain half a tonne of gold, 1,000 tonnes of copper, 2.5 tonnes of silver and 50kg to 60kg of palladium. On average, one tonne of circuit boards produces 165gm of gold, equating to around £9k.

Mark Loveridge, business unit director at Precious Metals Recovery, told the PA News Agency the factory processes were a “world first”, adding that the Mint is very good at taking things “from a beaker to an industrial scale”.

He also said: “If we look at e-waste generated the UK is the second worst offender in terms of the amount we produce per capita.

“It's the equivalent of about 25 kilos a person. And that's the equivalent to about a 50-inch TV, just to give you an idea in terms of what that kind of translates into.

“We all have our jar at home where we put our coins into. It's the same with our electronic devices.

“You have probably got a couple of mobile phones sat in a drawer and TV in the back bedroom or the garage or something that needs to come back into that supply chain so it can be recycled and those materials recovered.”

The silver and gold are used by the official maker of British coins to produce jewellery and commemorative coins. The non-precious metal that is recovered (copper, tin, steel, aluminium) is sent to other companies as a raw material to turn them into products such as sheets/bars/rods to manufacture new products.

The idea is that recovered, high-purity gold will reduce the dependence on traditional mining activity and encourage more sustainable industry practices.

As things stand, The Royal Mint receives the circuit boards, which are then processed in a newly built specialised plant, which separates all the components and metals.

The pieces containing the gold are then sent on to a second facility on the South Wales site, which uses world-first patented chemistry from Canadian cleantech company Excir to remove the metal.

Unlike other gold extraction processes that require extremely high temperatures, and take a lot of time, the new process at the Mint uses a washing machine-style spinning drum that washes the gold-containing parts in a special acid mix that dissolves the precious metal in just four minutes.

It also does this at temperatures of just 20C to 25C, using a lot less energy than other gold extraction methods.

The factory is powered by electricity, and there are wind turbines and a solar farm on site. Everything from the process is recycled, or reused, from the plastic on the circuit boards to the acid used to dissolve the gold.

Anne Jessopp, chief executive at The Royal Mint, said: “The Royal Mint is transforming for the future, and the opening of our Precious Metals Recovery factory marks a pivotal step in our journey.

“We are not only preserving finite precious metals for future generations, but we are also preserving the expert craftsmanship.

“The Royal Mint is famous for creating new jobs and reskilling opportunities for our employees.

“We have ambitious plans, and I am proud that we are safeguarding The Royal Mint for another 1,100 years.”

As well as recycling the circuit boards it receives, The Royal Mint is also working towards receiving the entire items – computers, mobile phones, server equipment – so it can be involved in the full process.

The above is the detailed content of The Royal Mint opens factory to extract gold from old computers and phones. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!

Statement
The content of this article is voluntarily contributed by netizens, and the copyright belongs to the original author. This site does not assume corresponding legal responsibility. If you find any content suspected of plagiarism or infringement, please contact admin@php.cn
The Royal Mint opens factory to extract gold from old computers and phonesThe Royal Mint opens factory to extract gold from old computers and phonesAug 07, 2024 pm 12:17 PM

The facility provides a sustainable source of precious metals and reduces reliance on mining.

Kew Gardens 50p coin depicting Chinese pagoda dethroned as rarest in circulationKew Gardens 50p coin depicting Chinese pagoda dethroned as rarest in circulationNov 07, 2024 am 12:16 AM

The Kew Gardens 50p - which depicts the Chinese pagoda at the Royal Botanic Gardens - was until recently considered to be the rarest coin in circulation

The Kew Gardens 50p: The Rarest Coin in Circulation in the UKThe Kew Gardens 50p: The Rarest Coin in Circulation in the UKNov 06, 2024 pm 09:20 PM

The 50p coin in question was released in 2009 to mark 250 years since the opening of Kew Gardens in 1759. Just 210,000 copies of the coin were produced by The Royal Mint, which lists the anniversary Kew Gardens coin as one of its most valuable.

The King Charles III Atlantic Salmon 50p: the nation's most collectable coinThe King Charles III Atlantic Salmon 50p: the nation's most collectable coinNov 20, 2024 am 03:38 AM

The 50 pence piece has become the most valued and collected coin in the UK, with many collectable designs appearing on its heptagonal canvas.

Rarest 50p coins in circulation the UK?Rarest 50p coins in circulation the UK?Nov 09, 2024 pm 06:48 PM

The Royal Mint has revealed the most valuable 50p coins in its collection. One of the rarest is the Kew’s Garden 50p, which was designed to mark the 250th anniversary of the gardens in 2009.

Royal Mint starts extracting gold from old phones and TVs to make commemorative coins and jewellery in 'world first'Royal Mint starts extracting gold from old phones and TVs to make commemorative coins and jewellery in 'world first'Aug 08, 2024 am 09:54 AM

The UK's coinmaker has opened a factory in South Wales which will be processing up to 4,000 tonnes of printed circuit boards from e-waste every year.

Post Office worker Diane Bath discovers 'goldmine' £1 coin featuring King Charles' facePost Office worker Diane Bath discovers 'goldmine' £1 coin featuring King Charles' faceSep 23, 2024 pm 09:01 PM

Diane Bath, 62, who runs a Post Office in Cumbria, took delivery of coins stamped with King Charles' face which turned out to be a goldmine.

New 50p coin featuring the Atlantic Salmon and bearing the King's portrait is now the rarest in circulationNew 50p coin featuring the Atlantic Salmon and bearing the King's portrait is now the rarest in circulationOct 08, 2024 am 04:12 AM

The Royal Mint has confirmed that the highly-collectable Kew Gardens 50p coin is no longer the rarest in circulation - as a new coin featuring the Atlantic Salmon and bearing the King's portrait has taken the title.

Hot AI Tools

Undresser.AI Undress

Undresser.AI Undress

AI-powered app for creating realistic nude photos

AI Clothes Remover

AI Clothes Remover

Online AI tool for removing clothes from photos.

Undress AI Tool

Undress AI Tool

Undress images for free

Clothoff.io

Clothoff.io

AI clothes remover

AI Hentai Generator

AI Hentai Generator

Generate AI Hentai for free.

Hot Article

R.E.P.O. Energy Crystals Explained and What They Do (Yellow Crystal)
2 weeks agoBy尊渡假赌尊渡假赌尊渡假赌
Repo: How To Revive Teammates
1 months agoBy尊渡假赌尊渡假赌尊渡假赌
Hello Kitty Island Adventure: How To Get Giant Seeds
4 weeks agoBy尊渡假赌尊渡假赌尊渡假赌

Hot Tools

SAP NetWeaver Server Adapter for Eclipse

SAP NetWeaver Server Adapter for Eclipse

Integrate Eclipse with SAP NetWeaver application server.

MinGW - Minimalist GNU for Windows

MinGW - Minimalist GNU for Windows

This project is in the process of being migrated to osdn.net/projects/mingw, you can continue to follow us there. MinGW: A native Windows port of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), freely distributable import libraries and header files for building native Windows applications; includes extensions to the MSVC runtime to support C99 functionality. All MinGW software can run on 64-bit Windows platforms.

VSCode Windows 64-bit Download

VSCode Windows 64-bit Download

A free and powerful IDE editor launched by Microsoft

MantisBT

MantisBT

Mantis is an easy-to-deploy web-based defect tracking tool designed to aid in product defect tracking. It requires PHP, MySQL and a web server. Check out our demo and hosting services.

mPDF

mPDF

mPDF is a PHP library that can generate PDF files from UTF-8 encoded HTML. The original author, Ian Back, wrote mPDF to output PDF files "on the fly" from his website and handle different languages. It is slower than original scripts like HTML2FPDF and produces larger files when using Unicode fonts, but supports CSS styles etc. and has a lot of enhancements. Supports almost all languages, including RTL (Arabic and Hebrew) and CJK (Chinese, Japanese and Korean). Supports nested block-level elements (such as P, DIV),