Urban mining by flash Joule heating

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dc.citation.articleNumber5794en_US
dc.citation.journalTitleNature Communicationsen_US
dc.citation.volumeNumber12en_US
dc.contributor.authorDeng, Bingen_US
dc.contributor.authorLuong, Duy Xuanen_US
dc.contributor.authorWang, Zheen_US
dc.contributor.authorKittrell, Carteren_US
dc.contributor.authorMcHugh, Emily A.en_US
dc.contributor.authorTour, James M.en_US
dc.contributor.orgSmalley-Curl Instituteen_US
dc.contributor.orgNanoCarbon Centeren_US
dc.contributor.orgWelch Institute for Advanced Materialsen_US
dc.date.accessioned2021-10-21T17:53:26Zen_US
dc.date.available2021-10-21T17:53:26Zen_US
dc.date.issued2021en_US
dc.description.abstractPrecious metal recovery from electronic waste, termed urban mining, is important for a circular economy. Present methods for urban mining, mainly smelting and leaching, suffer from lengthy purification processes and negative environmental impacts. Here, a solvent-free and sustainable process by flash Joule heating is disclosed to recover precious metals and remove hazardous heavy metals in electronic waste within one second. The sample temperature ramps to ~3400 K in milliseconds by the ultrafast electrical thermal process. Such a high temperature enables the evaporative separation of precious metals from the supporting matrices, with the recovery yields >80% for Rh, Pd, Ag, and >60% for Au. The heavy metals in electronic waste, some of which are highly toxic including Cr, As, Cd, Hg, and Pb, are also removed, leaving a final waste with minimal metal content, acceptable even for agriculture soil levels. Urban mining by flash Joule heating would be 80× to 500× less energy consumptive than using traditional smelting furnaces for metal-component recovery and more environmentally friendly.en_US
dc.identifier.citationDeng, Bing, Luong, Duy Xuan, Wang, Zhe, et al.. "Urban mining by flash Joule heating." <i>Nature Communications,</i> 12, (2021) Springer Nature: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26038-9.en_US
dc.identifier.digitals41467-021-26038-9en_US
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26038-9en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/111593en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherSpringer Natureen_US
dc.rightsThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/en_US
dc.titleUrban mining by flash Joule heatingen_US
dc.typeJournal articleen_US
dc.type.dcmiTexten_US
dc.type.publicationpublisher versionen_US
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