Inorganic-organic mesoporous hybrid segregators for selective and sensitive extraction of precious elements from urban mining.

This study aimed to develop a highly selective extraction protocol for gold (Au) ions from electronic urban waste (EUW) using simple, low-cost Inorganic-organic mesoporous hybrid segregators. The unique features of mesoporous hybrid segregator architectures are of particular to ensure effective adsorption system in terms of selective and sensitive recovery of Au ions from EUW. The segregator platform featured 3D micrometric, mesocage double-serrated plant-leaf-like γ-AlO sheets with hierarchy surfaces containing tri-modal mesopores interiorly and uniformly arranged toothed edges of ~20-40 and ~15 nm groove width and depth at the exterior surfaces, respectively. Rational incorporation of actively organic chelates into hierarchical γ-AlO sheet platforms leads to the production of a couple of selective segregators 1 and 2 (namely, SC1 and SC2) for Au ions at specific conditions by applying batch and fixed-bed columnar techniques. The mesocage SC segregators offer a selective extraction approach of Au ions from mixed element contents released from a computer motherboard (CMB). Our finding indicated that the textural and hierarchal features of the mesocage SC segregators played key roles in the selective adsorption/recovery of Au ions at pH 2-2.5 with high capacity (136-141 mg/g range) and effective reusability ≫10 consecutive cycles. In general, the developed SCs could be utilized as a real extractor of Au recovery from spent CMBs.