Electrifying Metallurgy: Precious Metals Refining
摘要
The world is going towards electrification faster than ever in many fields including transportation and automotive fields such as buses, heavy trucks, and machinery too. However, in other fields, the rate of electrification is still somewhat slower. For example, one specific field is the precious metals (PM) refining industry, which is very much needed for the green transition and hydrogen economy. The PM industry is nowadays heavily relying on chemical-intensive processes and electrowinning is used to recover already purified solutions. As electrification is evident, the PM industry should not differ relative to other fields driven by electrification. The current electricity-driven processes are designed to operate with well-specified solutions, prior operation steps are required. The energy intensity of those processes is huge and their chemical load is even higher. Usually, the chemical-intensive process is divided into smaller unit operations, where similar chemicals relying on the operation are repeated just to get certain elements below their threshold values in order to get the best out of the EW process. One possibility is the use of well-tailored, pulsating-based electrolysis provided by Elmery Ltd., which is based on a patented unique metal recovery technology for refineries to better circulate the metals, increasing cost-efficiency and sustainability.