Urban Mining- an important part of Circular Economy
URBAN MINING
What Is Urban Mining?
Urban mining is the practice of extracting valuable metals and materials from electronic waste. It is simply reclaiming e-waste products sent to landfills and the process of extracting raw materials from those devices. These can include I Phones, Android phones, Mac Books, tablets, etc.
e-waste is often shipped overseas to developing countries, or unregulated countries, where unprotected and/or unregulated workers extract those valuable raw materials from the waste. Sometimes, e-waste is simply dumped in landfills where urban miners scavenge for materials that they can sell.
If we look at cell phones alone, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that for every million units recycled, one could extract:
?According to a report, annual production of electronic goods worldwide requires 320 tons of gold and 7,500 tons of silver, while 50 million tons of e-waste are generated globally each year.
Safe and secure urban mining requires proper facilities to retrieve precious metals. E-waste is too often managed incorrectly and the laundry list of toxic materials they contain wreaks havoc on both humans and the environment.
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Mitra S.K. Laboratories have the capability to detect the amount of precious metals in a given sample of e-waste as well as determine the damage done by irresponsible disposal of e-waste samples.
Extraction of precious metals from e-waste
The concept of urban mining is a promising way to recover precious metals and rare earth elements from the electronic waste piling up due to rapid advancement of technology. Precious metals and rare earth elements both being high value rare commodities demand an effective recovery that can provide relief to challenges associated with waste management, environmental hazards and cost effectivity towards the electronics industry.
The Mitra S.K. Central Laboratory conducts analysis of precious metal content as well as the recovery study of REEs present in the solid electronic waste such as PCBs and mobile boards. Raw samples are crushed in dedicated crushers to suitable size, followed by processes to obtain an ash which is rich in various elements such as Au, Pt, Pd, Cu and REEs. Appropriate acid digestion followed by ICP-OES and ICP-MS finish are carried out in our state-of-the-art laboratories to obtain a measure of the metals so that economic viability of recovery of these elements can be judged precisely.
Tests for detecting pollution due to irresponsible disposal of e-waste
Mitra S.K. Environmental Testing Laboratory is also geared to test the amount of pollution due to irresponsible disposal of e-waste. Our lab can test the presence of unacceptable levels of heavy metals in the gas emission levels due to irresponsible melting of e-waste, leaching of hazardous pollutants into the soil and eventually to ground water. We also conduct TCLP testing as er hazardous Waste Rules (HWA) amendment and stack emission testing.