We are very familiar with food waste. About 1.3 billion tonnes of food is being wasted globally each year. This has put immense pressure on our planet’s ecosystem.
Used electronic devices or e-waste is another problem that the world has to face after the emerging of technology these days. People are changing their phones more frequently as the systems and specifications of the phone keep advancing each time.
To overcome these two problems, a new way to extract precious metals from an old and used lithium cell using fruit peels has been developed by researchers from Nanyang Technological University.
To create a new battery out of the old battery, it will usually be treated at a high temperature to extract the valuable metals and it will release dangerous toxic gases.
Luckily, the new extraction method is a cleaner and cheaper way of treating e-waste.
Researchers from the university demonstrated that orange peels can be used to recover precious metals from old batteries. It can also create functional batteries from the recovered metals. They successfully extracted around 90 percent of lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese from used lithium batteries.
It is found that this process is eco-friendly and much safer. The researchers are optimizing the performance of the new batteries made from extracted materials. They are also planning to increase the production of these batteries.
Source: mothership.sg