UK to build $1.5 million plasma facility to recover precious metals from e-scrap

CANTERBURY (Scrap Monster): A syndicate of UK firms led by Swindon, UK-based Tetronics has announced construction of gigantic plasma arc facility to recycle unwanted and used electronics appliances and devices.

The investment of the project is estimated at around £1 million ($1.5 million). The facility will employ state-of-the-art plasma smelting technology to recover precious metals from electronics scrap. The other members of the syndicate are Vale Europe and Metech Recycling UK Ltd. The project is being funded by Innovate UK- an executive non-departmental public body through a grant of $884,000.

The proposed facility will be the country’s first integrated plasma facility to recover precious metals such as gold, silver and platinum group metals at a smaller scale that will not require further refining stages.

According to Tetronics, UK is estimated to consume approximately 5.6 million metric tons of electronic products between 2015 and 2020. These products are estimated to contain more than 30 metric tons of gold, 600 metric tonnes of silver and more than 3 metric tons of platinum group metals. The total value of recovered gold, silver and platinum group metals from these products would exceed £1 billion ($1.5 billion).

The electronic scrap collected in the country is normally shipped to large refineries which are primarily designed to recover base metals such as copper. Recovery of precious metals is only of secondary priority in such refineries. As a result, precious metal recoveries have remained at surprisingly lower levels. The new project is expected to boost extraction of precious metals from electronic scrap in a big way.

The project is expected to go online by mid-2016.