“TECNALIA is researching a sustainable alternative to optimise the selective extraction and separation of precious metals from different waste”
We are developing innovative and environmentally friendly technologies to recover precious metals
We are working with innovative, efficient, low-cost and environmentally friendly technologies to recover gold, silver and platinum group metals from various complex waste streams. TECNALIA is in charge of leading the PEACOC initiative into which these developments fall.
Under diverse operating conditions, we are researching and testing an innovative and sustainable alternative based on the combination of deep eutectic solvents and electrochemical processes to optimise the selective extraction and separation of precious metals from different end-of-life products; automotive catalysts, photovoltaic panels and low and medium grade waste from electrical and electronic components.
TECNALIA will also evaluate the environmental and economic sustainability of the technologies developed in this initiative at a laboratory and pilot scale.
New value chain in Europe
New industrial alternatives will be offered to strengthen the sustainability of European resources through secondary waste recovery, while at the same time reducing the risk of the supply of critical and precious metals from importing countries.
In this respect, the initiative seeks to establish a new comprehensive and complete value chain, on a pre-commercial scale, which is an efficient and robust alternative in order to address this challenge. Different innovative metal concentration processes will be designed and built from the aforementioned waste, as well as a pilot refining plant (PEACOC plant) to extract the metals of interest from the concentrated streams.
The project also considers the use of the metals obtained in diverse marketable products; for example, new catalysts, materials for electrochemical applications, filaments for 3D printing, individual streams of high added value metals, among others.
This is the first time that the technologies used within the project have been scaled up to a pre-commercial level and used to demonstrate an industrial alternative to supply Europe with critical and precious metals from waste. The pilot plant to be developed within PEACOC will represent a real technology transfer from the R&D phase to marketable products.
Potential of precious metals
Precious metals, such as gold and silver, and platinum group metals are widely used in various economic sectors in many industrial applications worldwide. Due to their unique properties, such as low corrosiveness, catalytic properties or low electrical resistivity, there are often no alternatives to replace them.
In Europe, there are considerable quantities of end-of-life products containing these metals which, although conventionally managed as waste, have enormous recycling potential. However, current industrial recycling technologies, such as smelting or hydrometallurgical processes used by large recycling companies, require high energy consumption and leave a negative carbon footprint that is detrimental to both human health and the environment.
Consortium
The project is led by TECNALIA and made up of a consortium of 20 partners: CRF, TREEE, COMET, MONOLITHOS, FORD OTOSAN, MBN, INNCEINNMAT, 6TMIC, ISL, ULiège, TU Delft, VITO, PNO INNOVATION, UNIVAQ, ISTAC, ADMATEC, JOHNSON MATTHEY and 3DHUB.
This project has received funding from the Horizon 2020 EU research and innovation program, in accordance with Subsidy Agreement No. 958302.
