Recycle instead of throwing away

Recovering gold from electronic waste

A team of scientists at ETH Zurich has developed a novel recycling process to recover gold from electronic waste. The process is based on protein fiber sponges made from whey. The sponges can be used to selectively adsorb gold from a solution of metal ions. When heated, the gold ions crystallize into flakes, which are then melted down to form a gold nugget. The scientists were able to obtain a nugget weighing around 450 milligrams with a gold content of almost 22 carats from 20 old computer circuit boards.