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Gold Mining in Europe
Key figures
Where Gold is found
How gold is mined
Cyanide in Gold Mining
Gold recovery from non-gold mines and scrap
recycling
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Gold
recovery from non-gold mines and scrap recycling
Metals are material with excellent recycling-properties.
Gold
is, together with silver and the platinum group metals,
con-
sidered as a precious metal. Precious metals can be directly
extracted from the ore, but also from by-products obtained
from the processing of other non-ferrous metals or from
recycled material. Increasing production and use of electronic
equipment in the modern society has made essential the
development of new recycling technologies. Metal or scrap
recycling will not only solve a part of the environmental
prob-
lems, but will also give a second life to a certain percentage
of
precious metals. To recover valuable material such as
metals,
and to avoid accumulation of waste, extensive practices
for
recycling have been developed. Today, most of electronic
scraps, and different types of wastes and residues are
re-
cycled or reused by environmental friendly technologies. |
Pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical technologies
are the main technologies that are generally
used to recover metals from scrap. Umicore in Belgium,
Nordeutsche Affinerie in Germany, Outo-
kumpu in Finland, Boliden in Sweden are major European
copper and lead recyclers and refineries
with significant precious metal production. In December
2001 the European Commission adopted a
Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment
and on the restriction of the use of certain
hazardous substances in electrical and electronic
equipment (COM (2000)347). This directive will
have to be im-plemented by all EU Member States within
18 months of publication in the Official
Journal. Consumers will be able to return used items
such as televisions and to asters to the manu-
facturer free of charge, who will have to recycle
at least 75% of the weight of every electronic/elec-
trical product. It is expected that, as a consequence
of this directive, gold recovery from recycling
will further increase.
Source: “Possibility of Electronic Scrap
Recycling in Slovakia”
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