Forget gallium: MTM says it’s extracted gold from e-waste

MTM Critical Metals (ASX:MTM) recently announced it retrieved gallium from e-waste using a proprietary acid-free system – and now it reports it’s done the same thing for gold.

The company utilises a technology called flash joule heating (FJH) which effectively sees e-waste recycling take place without the need to use acids. The company also points to a heavy emissions load created by standard smelting processes that further adds to atmospheric greenhouse gas accumulation.

While it’s not clear how much gold was actually produced by weight in MTM’s Thursday communiqué, the company reported a “70% yield” for gold.

In the next year, the company hopes to set up a commercial-scale facility capable of using FJH on one ton of e-waste per day. In the background, prototype testing and a hunt for “strategic partnerships” remain ongoing.

When it comes to prototype testing, it’s worth highlighting MTM’s guidance as below.

“While gold has been the primary focus of initial testing, recovery rates for other valuable metals like copper, silver, and palladium were lower due to the present sole focus on proof-of-concept conditions for gold extraction,” the company wrote.

“MTM is developing a dual-stage flash process such that all metals including copper, palladium and silver, can be efficiently recovered while maintaining the strong gold recovery results, with further testing planned in the next phase.”

In other words: they’re still working on the process to extract multiple high-value commodities from e-waste at once. It’s unclear if the FJH process is itself re-cycleable.

The company describes it as an acid-free process that uses chlorine gas and electrical energy instead. “FJH can vaporize metals from e-waste and recover them in a single step without using toxic acids or non-selective incineration.”

The company repeatedly highlighted humanity’s growing e-waste volumes on Thursday.

MTM last traded at 4.9cps.