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Our innovative technology provides sustainable recovery of critical metals from printed circuit boards; with aspirations to deploy our biorefineries globally and redefine e-waste.
About
The process Mint Innovation is developing could be key in generating low carbon critical raw materials for Logitech to manufacture its next generation of consumer electronic products and computing peripherals from. The Mint process recovers targeted electrification minerals from wastes such as old Logitech printed circuit boards - we initially grind these boards up (to increase the available surface area) the remove some of the base metals that are found in the board using conventional chemical techniques - this produces a mixed metal hydroxide filter cake. Next we selectively recover the copper and tin that are present in the board - we electroplate the copper into a 99.9% pure sheet copper product. The tin is selectively removed using a chelating agent - these metals can go straight back to Logitech to go back into manufacture of consumer and B2B products. Finally we can recover Gold and the Platinum Group Metals such as Iridium, Rhodium , Platinum and Palladium utilising our award-winning biotech process - we introduce bacteria that will selectively scrub these precious and rare metals from the waste - 12 hours later the bacteria have recovered all these rare metals - this precious metals can again be returned to Logitech to go back into the manufacturing process. Low carbon metals where the earth has not been mined in order to provide them. Circularity achieved.
Key Benefits
A Better Environmental Outcome The Mint process represents a far better environmental outcome for the recovery of critical metals from Logitech's electronic waste – we require less energy to perform our process and consequently we generate less CO2 as a result. Local Furthermore, our plants have tremendous scalability so they can be dropped into a variety of different situations and still be the correct size for the job. We will bring the plant to the area the waste is generated – currently e-waste has to be shipped very long distances to smelters for this work to be undertaken. Quicker Our biotechnology-based recovery process is very fast – it can take up to three months for smelters to return the value in the e-waste to producer customers – we can do that in one month. Thereby helping ease the strain on Logitech cashflow. Efficient The Mint metal recovery process is just as efficient at metal recovery as the incumbent smelting process – and we are still improving it to recover a wider range of elements that we can pay out on – and our R & D department of scientists have been set stretch targets for us to recover even more value at lower cost.
Applications
Our technology can recover target electrification metals from a variety of substrate materials - we know that they can be used to recover these elements from waste printed circuit boards - western countries produce a large quantity of circuit boards per annum and currently only 15% per annum is disposed of properly (with metals recovered). Our biotech process is scalable and can be deployed at a local level so the waste does not have to move internationally for reprocessing as it does now. We can also recover the platinum and palladium from car catalytic converters, again these have to be transported internationally for smelting - which is a very energy intensive process that produces 3 x the CO2 of the Mint process. Each country that we develop a plant in, will also achieve a greater level of mineral security and be able to now source these recovered metals from within its national borders - some of these metals are mined in geopolitically unstable areas - the Mint process will increase mineral sovereignty for these countries.