Recovery of precious metals using biomass

Hirota, Koichi; Parajuli, D.; Seko, Noriaki

Conventional methods for the recovery of precious metals are solvent extraction, chemical precipitation, and use of ion exchange resins. However these methods are facing to significant disadvantages like high capital costs, large chemical and energy requirements, and generation of toxic sludge or other waste products creating additional burden. Development of biomass based sorbents is a better, probably the best, option with lower capital cost and higher efficiency. Although the biomass-sorbents are better than the existing methods, the methods of preparing sorbents from them usually use several kinds of chemicals. In the present work, biomass has been modified with functional groups after electron beam irradiation and its performance for the recovery of precious metals has been studied. The obtained results are compared with that of chemically modified derivative.