The group, made up of environmental tech company SEM, Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Scotland, University of Edinburgh, and the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre, calls the system “Dram.”
Dram first removes gold and silver from printed circuit boards, and the effluent can be further filtered to retain aluminum, tin, and zing.
“This project has proven the use of an approach that is more rooted in biology and, with that, is much more sustainable—each stage of the filtration process has a lower impact than if it was done in any traditional manner,” Leigh Cassidy, lead scientist at SEM, says in a press statement. “We are now looking to build the system into WEEE’s operations and then take it to other sites, where processes can be made more environmentally friendly. The next stage will be commercializing the technology to full effect and we are pulling together bids for funding to make that happen.”