Source: Flinders University, 6/27/25
A major discovery by an interdisciplinary team of experts in green chemistry, engineering and physics at Flinders University in Australia has found a safer and more sustainable approach to extract and recover gold from ore and electronic waste. The glistening gold-extraction technique, unveiled in the leading global journal Nature Sustainability, promises to reduce levels of toxic waste from mining and shows that high purity gold can be recovered from recycling valuable components in printed circuit boards in discarded computers.
The new process uses a low-cost and benign compound to extract the gold. This reagent (trichloroisocyanuric acid) is widely used in water sanitation and disinfection. When activated by salt water, the reagent can dissolve gold. Next, the gold can be selectively bound to a novel sulfur-rich polymer developed by the Flinders team. The selectivity of the polymer allows gold recovery even in highly complex mixtures. The gold can then be recovered by triggering the polymer to “un-make” itself and convert back to monomer. This allows the gold to be recovered and the polymer to be recycled and reused.