As always and as we should probably preface every conversation that we have about materials, we should lean into the reduce side of the triangle way more than we do.
But, until we get that perfected, we need to figure out better ways to recycle those materials that we use.
In this video, an Aussie company is working on e-waste recycling, particularly toward the recovery of the precious metals: palladium, gold, copper. The activity series comes in at 2:15 when the narrator says, "palladium and gold are still stuck in the solids. They're harder to dissolve."
He really means that they're harder to react and doesn't explain that it's because of their extremely low positions on the activity series that this is true.
"For the precious metals, you need something with a little more oomph."
Yeah, you would.
This company goes on to use - according to the video - microorganisms that consume and absorb heavy metals allowing the company to concentrate those and sort them from the waste. That's fascinating, and I love the idea that they went looking for microorganisms that had evolved to thrive on mine waste instead of trying to 'invent' a new process chemically. Brilliant, gents!
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I also dig the gold nanoparticles appearing purple. I've read about red glass from gold nanoparticles before, but hadn't heard about purple. Upon further reading, it looks like the distinctions from red to purple depend largely on the size of the nanoparticles.
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150 grams of gold from 1 metric ton?
That doesn't seem like much, but when they go on to say that open pit gold mining nets 3-5 grams per ton of rock, that looks way more profitable.
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And the the video gets to the environmental justice side of things. There is a cost to our consumer culture. We in the wealthy west just aren't always the ones who are paying that cost.
Man, I hope that some of these phenomenal processes that we've heard about over the decades come to fruition and that they don't all go the way of anything into oil.
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