TransFIRe researcher, Dr Masoud Ahmadinia, has recently finished a project working with The Royal Mint on their innovative initiative to extract precious metals from the circuit boards of electronic waste, such as laptops and mobile phones, in order to create an eco-friendly jewellery line.
The Royal Mint is working in collaboration with Excir, a Canadian clean tech start-up, to use their patented technology, based on revolutionary chemistry and aims to leverage advanced technologies and innovative methodologies to enhance the extraction process.
As part of a secondment, Dr Ahmadinia spent a number of days embedded within The Royal Mint, after which, a range of documentation and analysis was produced. These included a Sankey diagram, visually representing the material and energy flow of the processes involved in order to understand their efficiency and identify potential opportunities, as well as a comprehensive cost analysis report for the energy use of processes.
As a result of the work with TransFIRe, potential project partners have expressed interest in the by-products of The Royal Mint’s processes and further opportunities for collaboration have been identified.