Coventry University Knowledge Transfer Partnership wins award

The university has worked with a recycling firm to extract precious metals from electronic waste.

The university and IT recycling firm N2S created a new form of 'bioleaching' which cleanly recovers precious metals including gold from printed circuit boards and other electronic components using bacteria.

At the Innovate Knowledge Transfer Partnership awards, they won the 'Changing the World' Award.

They say that bioleaching uses microbes to extract metals from solids in a liquid solution without high energy consumption.

According to the researchers, the gold extraction process takes a few days, compared to a lengther process that uses strong acids such as cyanide.

'Working alongside an SME like N2S is fantastic, because we tackle the problem by working first-hand with a business that knows what the issues are, and which methods will be economically viable. To work on something that not only has scientific merit, but also immediate real-world value, is incredibly rewarding,' says Sebastien Farnaud, Professor of Bio innovation at the Centre for Sport, Exercise and Life Sciences at Coventry University who led on the project.