Figure 1 : UWin Nanotech supplies a type of neutral and cyanide-free chemical UW-860 Chemical Gold Stripper.

This report clearly points out that there are enormous business opportunities for urban mining, and growth in the amount of e-waste is accompanied by rising values for urban mining. Moreover, the continual feasibility of urban mining and e-waste recycling will bring about more and more opportunities for social enterprises.

To electronics product manufacturers, if precious metals can be effectively recycled from e-waste parts and original materials, it will be a step forward in reducing companies’ capital expenditures when they purchase materials. For PCB manufacturers and IC packaging and testing industries in particular, expenditures for gold-grade precious metal materials occupy 10% of the total operating costs. As soon as there are extreme fluctuations in the value of metals, they will immediately have a severe influence on enterprise operations.

As a result, establishing a stable source of recycled precious metals is necessary for the continual operation of related businesses. In addition, using recycled materials is an international trend, and to the extremely internationalized electronics companies it is a kind of value for business name brands.

Owing to the massive business opportunities in e-waste, environmental recycling businesses have already invested in this domain. They recycle waste electronic products and PCB, and extract valuable precious metals from them. Then they provide them to related businesses and establish simple e-waste recycling chains. Nevertheless, there are currently environmental misgivings about their refining methods, and their benefits tend to be low.

“Traditional stripping methods use aqua regia and cyanide as gold-stripping prescriptions. However, these two chemical agents are corrosive and highly toxic and have lethal effects on both people and the environment,” said Kenny Hsu, Managing Director of UWin Nanotech.

Kenny Hsu also pointed out that aqua regia is highly corrosive, and during the stripping process, base materials will corrode. Furthermore, it is impossible to reuse materials after soaking them, which creates another form of waste.

Being devoted to the research and development of environmentally friendly and non-toxic gold stripping methods, UWin Nanotech supplies a type of neutral and cyanide-free chemical UW-860 Chemical Gold Stripper. The metal stripping additive has a pH value of 7.4, which is neutral and be used in regular polyethylene (PE) or polypropylene (PP) containers; moreover, afterwards the base materials will not be harmed.

Even more importantly, the UW-860 Chemical Gold Stripper does not contain cyanide materials, and it is completely harmless to the environment and human beings. In addition, it still has higher stripping efficiency than stripping methods that use cyanide and aqua regia. The saturation of stripping gold is 7g/L, which is several times higher than the concentrations obtained using traditional methods.

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