Britain extracts precious metals from old phones and computers

The UK’s precious metals will be mined from discarded electronic devices such as cell phones and laptops thanks to the introduction of new technology, according to the Royal Mint.

“The Royal Mint has signed an agreement with Canadian clean-tech startup Excir to deploy the world’s first technology in the UK to safely extract and process gold and other precious metals from e-waste,” the company said.

Excir’s patented technology, based on revolutionary chemistry, extracts gold from electronic waste found in circuit boards of discarded laptops and cell phones.

According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), more than 50 million tons of e-waste are produced annually in the world, and if nothing is done, by 2030 this figure will reach 74 million tons. Currently, less than 20% of e-waste is recycled worldwide. The International Telecommunication Union points out that in this way gold, silver, copper, palladium and other precious metals, valued at about $57 billion, are disposed of.

How much gold is in a modern computer

If you take a complete computer with peripherals, keyboard and mouse, you will get about 1.5-2 grams of gold. Before 2000, computers used more precious metals than modern metals. This is not because of the economy, but because of production technology.

Processors that contain the most gold

Pentium Pro – 11.4 mg

Intel i486-8.6 mg

Intel i435 DX4- 8.5 mg

i processor-6-mg

i 486 TX486DLC – 6.72 mg

IBM 6x86MX PR200- 5.75 mg.