In Lorraine, researchers are proposing to bequeath your phone to science to better recycle it

More than 120 million old telephones are abandoned in the drawers of the French. In Lorraine, scientists are launching an appeal to recover 10,000 of them. They are seeking to develop an innovative and virtuous process for the environment which would make it possible to extract from the electronic cards of our devices the many precious metals, such as gold, tin, palladium, silver and other rarer ones like tantalum. Cards reduced to crumbs and which will be the subject of a whole bunch of manipulations to identify the metals they contain, know how to separate them and quantify them, so as not to lose anything.

An essential step according to Éric Meux, responsible for the Masters in Sustainable Chemistry and Environment at the Jean Lamour Institute in Metz: “When trying to develop a process for recovering metals from industrial or other waste, it is essential to know precisely the composition of this waste“. But for that, material is needed. The scientist hopes to reach the 4000 laptops recovered by September and the initial objective of 10,000 in February 2022. Date on which a master’s student at the National School graduate in geology from the University of Lorraine will be recruited to support researchers on this ambitious project.

Several Lorraine laboratories are participating in this research in Metz, Nancy, or even Bar-le-Duc. So if you want to help science, researchers have set up various collection points in the region, which you can find at this address.

The researchers of the THYMO project need to collect 10,000 mobile devices to carry out their research and recover, from the electronic cards of phones, gold, silver, tantalum etc. #recycling
Collection points https://t.co/uwAqJa0ILw pic.twitter.com/E3qVfBHrw5

– Carnot Icéel (@Carnot_Iceel) June 11, 2021