Brown, Nigel

Creamer, Neil

Essa, AMM

Macaskie, Lynne

A new approach is described for the recovery of precious metals (PMs: Au, Pd and Ag) with &gt;99% efficiency from aqueous solution utilising biogas produced during the aerobic growth of Klebsiella pneumoniae. Gold was recovered from electronic scrap leachate ( approximately 95%) by this method, with some selectivity against Cu. The recovered PM solids all contained metal and sulphur as determined by energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis (EDX). X-ray powder diffraction analysis (XRD) showed no crystalline metal sulphur compounds but a crystalline palladium amine was recorded. Silver was recovered as a sulphide (found by EDX), carbonate and oxide (found by XRD). EDX analysis of the Au-precipitate showed mainly gold and sulphur, with some metallic Au(0) detected by XRD. The gold compound was shock-sensitive; upon grinding it detonated to leave a sooty black deposit

A new approach for the recovery of precious metals from solution and from leachates derived from electronic scrap

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

University of Birmingham Research Portal

University of Birmingham Research Portal