A group of researchers in France say captured carbon dioxide can be used to extract metals from post-consumer electronics.
‘By simultaneously extracting metals by injecting CO2, you add value to a process that is known to be cost-intensive,’ says Julien Leclaire who leads the project at the University of Lyon. His team collected CO2 from a car exhaust, cooled it, then pumped it into a mix of chemicals called polyamines. The CO2 combined with the polyamines to create molecules of differing shapes and sizes.
This innovative process dissolves certain metals in the liquid while others become solid. Leclaire reports that his team successfully separated lanthanum, cobalt and nickel – all of which are used in batteries, computers and magnets.
The work has been published in the journal Nature Chemistry.
