Pre-commercial pilot for the efficient recovery of Precious Metals from European end of life resources with novel low cost technologies

ongoing

PEACOC will showcase a first-of-a-kind economically and environmentally viable pre-commercial metallurgical system for recovering Precious Metals (PMs) (i.e. Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) identified as critical raw materials by the European Commission (EC), as well as gold (Au) and silver (Ag)), highly important for the EU economy, from a wide variety of abundant end-of-life (EPEACOC will showcase a first-of-a-kind economically and environmentally viable pre-commercial metallurgical system for recovering Precious Metals (PMs) (i.e. Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) identified as critical raw materials by the European Commission (EC), as well as gold (Au) and silver (Ag)), highly important for the EU economy, from a wide variety of abundant end-of-life (EoL) products in Europe. The concept is mainly based on previously developed recovery and refining technologies to TRL 5 in the PLATIRUS Research and Innovation project (Micro-Wave assisted leaching and Gas Diffusion Electrocrystallization GDEx), which were flagged by the Innovation Radar initiative of the EC as excellent innovations and showed a significant cost reduction and lower environmental impact compared to state-of-the-art hydrometallurgical processes as will be shown throughout the proposal. The PEACOC system will be demonstrated at pre-commercial scale at TRL7 with capacity to treat ~50t of PMs concentrates/year i.e., with a recovery capacity of i)2 kg PGMs/week from spent autocatalysts (containing ~2.5kg PGMs/t), ii) 0.5-1 kg Au/week from Printed Circuit Board Assembly (PCBA) with a focus on low and medium grade PCBA (containing 20-100 g Au/t) that are currently poorly valorized in industrial smelting processes due to low PM concentrations, and iii) 10 kg Ag/week from EoL Photovoltaic (PV) panels (containing ~3-10 kg Ag/t) which will be an abundant resource in Europe in the coming few years. The project will demonstrate the production of PMs at a profit margin up to 80% with respect to current PMs market prices.