IBC Advanced Technologies, Inc., 856 East Utah Valley Drive, American Fork, UT 84003, USA.
Chem Soc Rev. 2014 Apr 21;43(8):2451-75. doi: 10.1039/c3cs60440c. Epub 2014 Jan 27.
Achievement of sustainability in metal life cycles from mining of virgin ore to consumer and industrial devices to end-of-life products requires greatly increased recycling rates and improved processing of metals using conventional and green chemistry technologies. Electronic and other high-tech products containing precious, toxic, and specialty metals usually have short lifetimes and low recycling rates. Products containing these metals generally are incinerated, discarded as waste in landfills, or dismantled in informal recycling using crude and environmentally irresponsible procedures. Low recycling rates of metals coupled with increasing demand for high-tech products containing them necessitate increased mining with attendant environmental, health, energy, water, and carbon-footprint consequences. In this tutorial review, challenges to achieving metal sustainability, including projected use of urban mining, in present high-tech society are presented; health, environmental, and economic incentives for various government, industry, and public stakeholders to improve metal sustainability are discussed; a case for technical improvements, including use of molecular recognition, in selective metal separation technology, especially for metal recovery from dilute feed stocks is given; and global consequences of continuing on the present path are examined.
实现从原生矿石开采到消费者和工业设备再到最终产品的金属生命周期的可持续性，需要大幅提高回收利用率，并利用传统和绿色化学技术改进金属加工。含有贵金属、有毒金属和特种金属的电子和其他高科技产品通常寿命短、回收利用率低。这些金属含量高的产品通常被焚烧，作为废物丢弃在垃圾填埋场，或在非正式的回收过程中用粗劣的、不负责任的环境处理方法进行拆解。金属的低回收利用率，加上对含有这些金属的高科技产品需求的增加，需要增加开采，随之而来的是环境、健康、能源、水和碳足迹方面的后果。在本教程综述中，介绍了在当前高科技社会中实现金属可持续性所面临的挑战，包括预计的城市矿业的应用；讨论了各种政府、行业和公众利益相关者为提高金属可持续性而采取的健康、环境和经济激励措施；提出了从稀溶液中选择性分离金属技术，特别是从稀溶液中回收金属的技术改进的理由，包括分子识别的应用；并研究了继续走当前道路的全球后果。
