I developed a simple, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly procedure for recycling gold from waste electrical and electronic equipment, based on the principles of catalysis. As a ligand for dissolving gold, I evaluated various commercially available ligands and, as part of this work, synthesized ligands with sulfur functional groups based on thiourea, as well as selenium-based compounds that could act as catalysts. The most suitable ligand was 2-mercaptobenzimidazole, which has been previously used for this purpose, while diselenides served as the catalyst. I used ethanol as the solvent and hydrogen peroxide as a green oxidant. After dissolution, I conducted the reduction of gold to its elemental state using sodium thiosulfate and recycled part of the ligand, 2-mercaptobenzimidazole. I performed the process on real samples, namely gold fingers from printed circuit boards. The solutions, precipitates, and isolated products of the entire process were analyzed using various characterization methods (NMR, HRMS, CHN elemental analysis, IR, AES, SEM-EDS).
|