Repurposed: Ground Circuit Board Waste Can Clean Up Toxic Metals 33
ckwu writes "Researchers in Hong Kong have found a beneficial new use for the electronic waste from discarded cell phones, computers, and other gadgets. Ground up into a powder, printed circuit boards from these products could sponge up another type of pollution — toxic heavy metals in water. The researchers processed the nonmetallic fraction of waste circuit boards into a powder and found that it adsorbed metals like copper, lead, and zinc more efficiently than commercially available industrial adsorbents."
Re:good tech doing good work (Score:4, Informative)
FWIW, it's not as if non-metallic recycled parts of circuit boards aren't in wide use today.
The groundup non-metalic parts of circuit boards are used in plastic lumber, insulating concrete, asphault, and as a structural filler for some composite materials which are used for various types of products from furniture, to lunch trays and picture frames. Generally this pcb-waste-resin composite material is considered a high-quality replacement for wood-plastic material resulting in material that handle better bending stresses.
The use of this in pulverized power form after treatment with KOH as heavy metal adsorber/filter is perhaps interesting/novel, but as stated in the article...
Although the boards can become effective adsorbents, he says the method for making the materials may not be as energy efficient and cost effective as for other adsorbents, such as granular ferric hydroxide, because of all the processing steps needed to produce the treated powder.
And since there are many other current uses for the waste circuit board material that require less energy and processing steps, it's not clear that this result is anything other than a novelty result...
Re:That's the clever part, (Score:5, Informative)
Skinner: ahh, but as it turns out the lizards where a god send since they've eaten all the pigeons.
Lisa: Isn't that a little short sighted, what happens when where up to our ears with lizards?
Skinner: Ah, well we shall simply release wave after wave of Chinese needles snakes.
Lisa: then what about the snakes?
Skinner: We simply import gorillas who will eat all the snakes.
Lisa: Well what happens when we're up to our ears in gorilla's!
Skinner: Ah that's the beauty of the thing, come winter the gorillas will freeze to death.