Scientists Extract Gold from Chemical Waste

Turkchem 27 Jan 2020 56 1 dk okuma

TURKCHEM

An R&D company operating under Selçuk Üniversitesi Teknokent has reported producing gold from chemical waste using bacteria called "Cupriavidus metallidurans".

Erdal Alsancak, General Manager of Farmapark Ar-Ge Biyoteknoloji, stated in a statement to AA that through biotechnology and fermentation processes, the bacterium transforms gold chloride and other metabolites found in chemical waste into gold at 99 percent purity. Explaining that they produce gold from chemical waste using "Cupriavidus metallidurans" bacterium, Alsancak said this work is significant for the scientific community. Noting that the study took 4 months, Erdal Alsancak expressed the following: "We observed that this bacterium produces gold by utilizing gold chloride or other metabolites found in heavy chemicals. We conducted this study only in a laboratory setting. It is not yet used in an industrial setting, but we believe the work will be important in the future for the recovery of heavy industrial waste. We conducted this study to open new horizons for young colleagues interested in biotechnology who aspire to become scientists."

"We found that the gold had 99 percent purity"

Alsancak noted that they subjected chemical waste to fermentation under appropriate conditions, stating: "We inoculated the bacterium we had in this environment and subsequently this bacterium produced gold from chemical waste. When we conducted analyses measuring the purity of the gold, we found that the produced gold had 99 percent purity."

"We produced it for the first time and it entered the literature"

Stating that the study is extremely costly, Erdal Alsancak said: "In Turkey, a bacterium transforming chemical waste into gold in this manner had not been performed. There was no such thing in the Turkish literature either; we produced it for the first time and it entered the literature. A few years ago, a similar study was conducted in the United States. We were inspired by that and conducted our own. They did this with their own waste. We accomplished this by using toxic and hazardous waste from the automotive sector in our country. In other words, the method and raw materials used were different. Therefore, we carried out original research in this sense."