Royal Mint to extract gold from e‑waste at a new Wales facility
The Royal Mint, the official producer of British coins, is opening a new facility in Wales to extract gold from waste. The factory will process up to 4,000 metric tonnes of e-waste annually. In addition to gold, silver, palladium, iron, aluminum, and copper will also be extracted.
The British will recover gold from e-waste in the town of Llantrisant in Wales through a special chemical process. Additionally, silver, palladium, iron, aluminum, and copper will be recovered.
The Royal Mint backs the entire undertaking. The new factory in Wales will provide a more sustainable source of gold and reduce reliance on mining.
Located in southern Wales, the 3,700-square-metre facility will use proprietary chemistry from the Canadian company Excir to extract gold from printed circuit boards (PCBs) in products such as TVs, laptops, and cell phones within minutes.
Excir's chemicals work at room temperature, creating a more energy-efficient and cost-effective method of recovering gold.
The British are scaling the technology from the laboratory to the industrial level. The recycling process can process up to 4,000 metric tonnes of e-waste annually. This will provide the British with a new, more sustainable way of "mining" high-quality gold with 999.9 purity. The recovered gold will be used to produce jewellery.
4,000 metric tonnes of e-waste can contain up to half a tonne of gold. The Royal Mint plans to produce jewellery from the recovered element. One gold ring requires 7.5 grams of precious metal.
According to the United Nations, global e-waste production is growing by 2.6 million metric tonnes each year. In 2022, a record 68 million metric tonnes of e-waste was produced. By 2030, discarded electrical devices are expected to rise to 90 million metric tonnes. Colossal amounts of gold and other elements are to be recovered.
