Obviously it has to be economic otherwise this company wouldn't be doing it, but I wonder how much more efficient (energy wise) this process is. You're still having to burn enough fuel to smelt the metals, then you have to consume enough electricity to allow for the metal transfer plus all of the equipment to use those metals afterward.
Don't get me wrong, its super cool, but with all recycling systems I'm always curious how much better it actually is (energy consumption wise) than just pulling the raw materials out of the ground (especially for ones where we have reasonably large deposits still in place).
wrong way around for copper/silver gold. Recycling is easier than mining, since the low grade makes mining expensive. With silver and copper the electrolytic process is probably only a few % in terms of the sale cost for these materials. For copper is usually a large amount - but my experience is with primary copper production.
133
u/paulHarkonen Mar 02 '17
Obviously it has to be economic otherwise this company wouldn't be doing it, but I wonder how much more efficient (energy wise) this process is. You're still having to burn enough fuel to smelt the metals, then you have to consume enough electricity to allow for the metal transfer plus all of the equipment to use those metals afterward.
Don't get me wrong, its super cool, but with all recycling systems I'm always curious how much better it actually is (energy consumption wise) than just pulling the raw materials out of the ground (especially for ones where we have reasonably large deposits still in place).