Mining.com, in its March 24, 2013 article, reports that Australians develop new recovery method for platinum and palladium.
Extract :
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A pair
of researchers at Australia's Murdoch University have
developed a new process to recover precious metals faster and at a lower
cost.
The two professors said
their microfluidics approach could transform the purification technology for
platinum group metals as well as rare earth elements.
Dr. Chun-Yang Yin and Dr. Aleksander Nikoloski proved
their concept in an
experiment extracting platinum and palladium from a leach
solution.
"The new microfluidics
approach is a single-stage process which sees the leach solution and extractant pumped along two very fine micro-channels
embedded in a Pyrex microchip," said Yin in a statement on the university's
website.
“This nano-level interplay results in increased
surface-to-volume ratio and improved metal ion transfer, with 99 per cent of
extraction occurring within a single second."
This new technique makes processing
faster and also reduces the plant space needed to carry it out thereby
lowering production costs.
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