Venezia Acqua Alta

ISMAR CNR Bologna will host Dr Helena I. Gomes, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham (UoN), from the 26th March to the 9th April!

This mobility is in the context of a bilateral International Exchange IEC\R2\222015 named “Biomining precious metals” between Faculty of Engineering of UoN and ISMAR-CNR.

Project’s lay summary

Metals are essential in our daily lives and have a finite supply. For example, smartphones are pocket-sized vaults of precious metals. An iPhone contains 0.034 g gold, 0.34 g silver, and less than one-thousandth of a gram platinum. The current CO2 emissions and environmental impact of mining those metals are untenable. We pursue reclaiming mineral resources from waste to meet the present needs of raw materials and metals without compromising future generations to meet their own needs. Platinum-group elements (PGE), in particular platinum, palladium, and rhodium, are precious metals we need to secure supply, as they are essential for catalysts, electronics, and medical therapies/diagnostics. One of the primary uses of PGE is in cars to reduce the harmful substances in exhaust fumes from gasoline burning. Recycling car catalysts has huge environmental benefits, enabling the recovery of up to 95% of platinum and saving high amounts of energy compared to mining the primary ores. Current recycling technologies are expensive, energy-intensive, and can generate pollution. In this project, we will study nature-inspired processes for recovering PGE from waste materials to counteract traditional mining of natural resources, which is often inefficient under the new circularity requirements. Acid-producing bacteria and bacteria that grow in contaminated land and under extreme conditions will be tested. Collaborating with Italy will enable us to compare different microbes and whether they can be used to upcycle critical metals. The goal is to develop a new and cleaner method to recover precious metals from wastes, avoiding overmining and its pollution.

Helena will give a seminar on the 4th April at ISMAR-CNR terzo piano sala riunioni (more info will follow, also a remote link will be available). If you are curious or want to chat and network, please feel free to email us (Helena.Gomes1@nottingham.ac.uk; valerio.funari@cnr.it).