Royal Mint to turn 4,000 tonnes of e‑waste into gold in 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 tonnes of e-waste yearly. In addition to gold, silver, palladium, iron, aluminium, and copper will also be extracted.
Britain will recover gold from e-waste in the town of Llantrisant in Wales through a special chemical process. Additionally, silver, palladium, iron, aluminium, and copper will be recovered.
The Royal Mint backs the entire undertaking. The new factory located 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 mobile 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 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.
Up to half a tonne of gold can be found in 4,000 tonnes of e-waste. The Royal Mint plans to produce jewellery from the recovered element. One gold ring contains 7.4 grams of precious metal.
According to the United Nations, global e-waste production is growing by 2.6 million tonnes yearly. In 2022, a record 68 million tonnes of e-waste was produced. By 2030, discarded electrical devices will rise to 90 million tonnes. Colossal amounts of gold and other elements are to be recovered.
