London: British coin maker Royal Mint has opened a new factory that will extract gold from old computers and phones to make jewelry and other items.
British coin maker plans to extract gold from circuit boards
The facility will reduce dependence on mining with the provision of a sustainable source of precious metal.
Royal Mint will process 4,000 tons of printed circuit boards (PCBs) from electronic waste such as old laptops and TVs.
About 600 mobile phones will be needed to make a ring weighing an estimated 7.5 grams (equivalent to the weight of one pound) of 886 collections of minutes.
The 4,000-tonne circuit boards will yield half a tonne of gold, 1,000 tonnes of copper, 2.5 tonnes of silver and 50-60 kg of palladium.
On an average, a ton of circuit boards will yield 165 gold worth 9,000 British pounds.
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