Gold is mainly used for the production of jewels, but its presence is also found in most electronics. It is used thanks to its excellent electric and thermal conductivity and because it resists oxidation and it is unalterable; the computer industry uses tons of gold every year.
This precious metal is in every part of the computers, from the processor to the motherboard, including expansion board, RAM memory and so on; the presence of gold in each part is infinitesimal. Due to the high spread of electronics, there is today a continuous supply of materials, from which it is possible to recover gold, silver and other rare metals; recovering gold from computers and other electronics is a sector that may have interesting developments. The benefits of this operation are different and positive for multiple reasons, above all for the environment. In fact today tons of electronic waste is produced by the most developed countries and it is not so easy to dispose of.
It is therefore known that in order to obtain gold from mines it is necessary to turn tons of material over with consequent repercussions on the environment: on average, to consider a gold mine profitable the grams of gold recovered by a ton of material should be from 2 to 4, while from one ton of hardware waste it is possible to recover more than 15 grams of precious metals.
It is not possible to recover gold without complex procedures and chemicals because in this case gold is present as an alloy with other metals, so it is necessary to separate it to be reused.
Gold recovery from computers and electronics is a sector with a lot of benefits both for the economy and the environment, that is why it is important to define procedures more suitable in order to take full advantage from this new opportunity.
