Gold from sim cards produces medicine

A joint effort from Imperial College London, UK and the University of Cagliari, Italy, sees sim cards separated and the gold within them used as a catalyst in producing drugs.

Researchers at the University of Cagliari have found a cost-effective way of extracting gold from a sim card, as well as other valued metals from Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), under mild conditions.

‘Research like ours aims to contribute to the cost-effective and sustainable recovery of metals by building a bridge between the supply of precious metals from scrap and industrial demand, bypassing the use of virgin raw materials’ says Professor Serpe, University of Cagliari.

The team at Imperial College used the extracted gold as a catalyst in the production of common pharmaceutical reactions. The results were positive and the catalyst could be used for further reactions, indicating increased sustainability.

‘It is shocking that most of our electronic waste goes to landfill and this is the opposite of what we should be doing to curate our precious elemental resources’ says Professor James Wilton-Ely, Imperial College. ‘Our approach aims to reduce the waste already within our communities and make it a valuable resource for new catalysts, thereby also reducing our dependence on environmentally damaging mining practices.’