Page 17 from: Out now: Recycling Technology 2021!

17
2021

INNOVATION

L
earning about the natural world is one
thing. Learning from the natural world
– that’s the profound switch,’ says Janine

Benyus. She is the founder of the Biomim-
icry Institute based in the US state of Montana
and has been a pioneer in this field for over
20 years. She cites forecasts that biomimicry
could account for US$ 425 billion of US GDP
by 2030 and for over US$ 1.5 trillion world-
wide.

Bio-inspiration
Though the term “biomimicry” doesn’t

make a lot of headlines, it’s something with
which we are all familiar. Just consider the
blades of a helicopter – and the dragonfly’s
wings. The design was inspired by nature such
that some working in this field refer to it as
‘bio-inspiration’.

A famous example concerns Japan’s Shin-
kansen H5 high-speed train – the third-fastest
train in the world owing to its narrow front
cabin design based on a kingfisher’s beak. The
result? A much quieter train that also con-
sumes 15% less electricity and goes 10% faster
than before.

And what about the innovative work pio-
neered by the UK’s Universities of Surrey and
Sussex whose researchers collaborated to de-
velop photonic crystals that turn a different
colour when exposed to changes in tempera-
ture, light and other external factors. Taking
inspiration from the peacock’s feathers, their
work will help predict earthquakes and detect
counterfeit bills.

There are also implications for recycling.
Ford is investigating how to recreate the sticky
substance found on the feet of the Tokay
gecko. The automotive giant believes doing
so could boost recycling rates for its vehicles
by 10%. How so? Replicating the amphibian’s
adhesive would allow the car manufacturer to
better separate the blend of plastics and foams
once the vehicle has been stripped of metals.

Tackling multi-layer materials
Using ‘selected enzymes and micro-organ-

isms’ could help in recycling multi-layer plas-
tic scrap, according to Amiplas. The Spanish
technological institute for plastics says the in-
novation also removes the smell of food from
packaging.

Researchers working on the EU-funded
ENZPLAST2 project have developed a re-
cycling technology that degrades the middle
adhesive layers of multilayer materials so that
the other layers can be ‘easily classified and
recycled’.

The process has two steps: the binding of
micro-organisms to the polymer surface and
growth of these micro-organisms using the

polymer as a source of carbon, followed by
final polymer degradation into CO2 and wa-
ter under aerobic conditions, and biogas and
water under anaerobic conditions.

‘To carry out biodegradation, micro-or-
ganisms produce and secrete enzymes into
the environment that break down the poly-
mer chain into low-molecular-weight frag-
ments,’ the researchers report. The direct use
of these specific enzymes is therefore another
option for breaking down polymers.

‘The monomers obtained as a product of
the degradation reaction can be recovered
and used to synthesize new products, thus
making it a sustainable chemical recycling
method,’ the researchers note. Lab tests have
shown that the enzymes can help degrade
certain polymers like polyurethane film by
up to 70%.

The optimal working temperature of en-
zymes is 25-95ºC – a lot lower than the 180-

230ºC range required by conventional meth-
ods, thus curbing energy consumption.

E-cycling boost with CO2
According to a group of researchers in

France, captured carbon dioxide can be used
to extract metals from post-consumer elec-
tronics. ‘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 Univer-
sity of Lyon.

His team collected CO2 from a car ex-
haust, cooled it and 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

E-scrap ‘microbrewery’ heads to the UK
New Zealand start-up Mint Innovation has resumed construction of its first UK-based,
commercial-scale refinery that extracts precious metals from electronics; work had been
put on hold following the Covid-19 outbreak. The company expects the new e-scrap hub,
being built in Cheshire, to be online by the end of August 2021. Feedstock comprising
mostly printed circuit boards will be sourced from the north of England.
Mint Innovation’s solution has made headlines because it does not rely on aggressive
chemicals such as cyanide. Instead, the process – a combination of hydrometallurgy and
biotechnology – uses bacteria to extract the valuable metals.
Mint Innovation ceo Will Barker compares the operation to a ‘microbrewery’. The e-scrap
is ground up, resulting in a fine dust which is dissolved in a solution that ‘metal hungry
micro-organisms feed on’, he explains. It takes about 24 hours for the new approach to
extract anything from copper to gold and platinum.
The entrepreneur argues that the Coronavirus is having a major impact on the highly-
globalised gold supply chain. ‘Demand is high in times of uncertainty, but supply is not
agile,’ Barker says. ‘Using Mint’s urban mining technology, we can urbanise gold supply,
with a distributed and scalable solution. A city’s discarded electronics can be recycled into
pure gold in a matter of days.’

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