Electronic waste recycling and management is a necessary practice due to the constant demand for new electronics and technologies. As more electronics are made, old electronics are thrown out and collected in electronic waste sites. These sites contain an abundance of hazardous materials and precious metals that can be recovered. The present experiment displays a small-scale example of the recycling and recovery of gold from old computer motherboards. This experiment will give insight on the quantity of gold that can be recovered from a recycling project and how a small-scale experiment can be magnified to a larger scale to deal with the overwhelming amounts of electronic waste in our environment. The amount of gold and precious metals recovered in our experiment proves that the challenges in cost and resources facing the e-waste recycling efforts are outweighed by the success of the recovery efforts.<br/>This experiment proved to be successful as gold was recovered from the computer parts we recycled. Thus, simple experiments and sustainable efforts can be made to combat the growing environmental problem of electronic waste. Other precious and not so precious metals like platinum, silver and copper can too, be recycled from old computer parts.

Extraction, recovery and purification of gold from old CPU and motherboard computer parts

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