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Symposium EN10: Critical Materials for Energy—Extraction, Functionality and Recycling

Elliot Menu, Polytechnique Montreal 

Green Circular Critical and Strategic Metal Recovery in a Laboratory Context 
Written by In Young Park 

Elliot Menu of Polytechnique Montreal presented a sustainable “green metallurgy” method for gold recovery, addressing the limitations of traditional hydrometallurgy, which relies on strong oxidizing agents and produces contamination. The proposed method uses hydrogen peroxide and organic acids derived from food waste to selectively oxidize base metals, leaving gold intact, which is then recovered via simple filtration. This approach eliminates toxic reagents, operates at room temperature, and avoids gold downcycling, making it both eco-friendly and energy-efficient. Scanning electron microscopy-energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis confirmed the purity and uniform gold coverage of recovered samples. Future work includes developing electrodes with recovered gold, analyzing their electrical properties, and expanding recovery efforts to include other electrode sources. 

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