Electronics Recycling Asia: Still feeling precious

Thierry van Kerckhoven

Enthusiasm in gold as a safe haven may have driven precious metals prices to irrational heights, but supply and demand fundamental are still healthy for gold, silver, platinum and palladium.

The state of precious metals markets was among the topics at the Electronics Recycling Asia conference, held in Singapore in mid-November.

Stewart Brown of London-based platinum group metals (PGM) company Johnson Matthey said even though prices have slumped in 2014, “palladium is a very valuable resource and is definitely worth recovering.”

PGMs are used in automotive catalytic converters, industrial catalysts, chemicals, jewelry, electronics, circuit boards, hard drives, fuel cells and pharmaceutical compounds, said Brown. Palladiums’ market is dominated by automotive catalysts, with some 73 percent of the metal used in that application.

Steady demand and some mining strikes combined to put platinum at a 29 metric ton supply deficit in 2013, said Brown. Palladium’s supply situation is similar, with mining output expected to be down by 6 percent in 2014, said Brown.

Despite these supply pressures, PGM prices have been down in 2014 for a non-market fundamentals reason. “Pricing sentiment has been following gold,” said Brown, even though the PGMs “have a different situation—they are much more industrial” than gold. Thus, PGM pricing “hasn’t reached levels you would expect in a supply deficit. It will eventually.”

Thierry van Kerckhoven of Belgium-based precious metals refiner Umicore said his company’s sizable refining operation in Hoboken, Belgium, can recover 17 different metals from ores, byproducts, circuit boards and obsolete electronics.

Van Kerckhoven said recovering precious metals from obsolete electronics will become increasingly difficult as computers and devices get smaller and manufacturers seek to substitute materials for expensive precious metals.

By weight, it takes 2,000 laptop computers to equal one desktop computer and 20,000 tablets to equate to a desktop unit. The circuit boards in newer, smaller devices are likewise miniaturized, said van Kerckhoven. The metal content in the average computer device peaked in 2003, he commented, and “there has been a steep decline in metal content in the last 10 years.”

Although more total devices are being manufactured globally, van Kerckhaven expressed concern that many obsolete items are going through informal channels with unsafe precious metals recovery practices.

Many of those informal recyclers use caustic and toxic cyanide solutions to strip gold, silver and platinum from circuit boards and other obsolete electronic items. Taiwan-based UWin Nanotech Co. Ltd. has created a non-cyanide-based alternative chemical that it says can alleviate many of the hazards at these operations.

UWin’s Kenny Hsu says a bath of the UWin solution attracts gold particles to two stainless steel cathode plates on either side of a tank. After the gold is collected, the solution can be filtered and recycled for reuse, said Hsu.

Tin also can be recovered with the system, said Hsu, with one metric ton of treated cell phones yielding 400 grams (14.1 ounces) of gold and 80 kilograms (176 pounds) of tin.

The UWin chemical process is in use on a large-scale at the Wistron Corp. precious metals refinery in Texas, said Hsu. Systems can be designed at many different scales and sizes, he added. “This can change your impression of gold recovery completely,” Hsu stated.

Electronics Recycling Asia was organized by Switzerland-based ICM Ag and held at the Shangri-La Hotel Singapore Nov. 11-14.