ULiège takes part in the PEACOC project for the recovery of precious metals from end-of-life resources
The University of Liege, and more particularly the GeMMe research group, is taking part in the European H2020 project PEACOC (Pre-commercial pilot for the efficient recovery of Precious Metals from European end-of-life resources with novel low-cost technologies) whose objective is the realization of a pre-commercial pilot aiming at the efficient recovery of precious metals from European end-of-life resources. PEACOC involves a consortium of 19 partners from 9 countries participating in the H2020 program, including industrial companies as well as leading European research centers and universities.
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€11.2 million grant was awarded by the European Commission (EC) to develop novel low-cost technologies for efficient recovery of Precious Metals from End-of-Life (EoL) resources in Europe. The PEACOC project will be developed under the leadership of Tecnalia Research and Innovation, a Spanish private, independent, non-profit applied research center of international excellence.
Through the PEACOC project, ULiège will upscale its NOVA process with the implementation of a first demonstration unit specifically for steps 1 and 2 below. ULiège will notably lead Work Package 3 (WP) on “optimization and upscaling of the concentration stage” with the following objectives :
- Concentrate gold (Au), silver (Ag), and palladium (Pd) from low/mid-grade Printed Circuit Board Assemblies (PCBAs) coming from Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEEs).
- Extract other valuable materials such as tin (Sn) and copper (Cu).
- Produce Platinum Group Metals (PGMs, the principal ones being platinum (Pt), palladium (Pd) and rhodium (Rh)) concentrates by separating the washcoat and ceramic support of EoL autocatalysts.
- Selectively separate Pd, Pt and Rh by Deep Eutectic Solvent (DES) technology from PGMs-concentrates derived from EoL autocatalysts.
The NOVA process has been developed by the GeMMe at ULiège for the treatment of post-shredder low-grade PCBAs to concentrate Au, Ag, Pd, Sn and Cu and has been upscaled to TRL 6 with a pilot having an input treatment capacity of 15 kg/day.
ULiège will participate to PEACOC through its GeMMe Research Group, member of the Urban and Environmental Engineering Research Unit (UEE/School of enginerring), and specialized in georesources, mineral engineering and extractive metallurgy. The GeMMe contributes to the development of innovative processes for the efficient management of mineral and metallic resources while providing unparalleled upscaling experience in urban ore characterization and processing (with a focus on innovative sorting techniques and hydrometallurgy) derived from a long research tradition in the processing of primary ores.
Several of the current PEACOC project partners have been involved in the PLATIRUS H2020 Research and Innovation project (GA: 730224) aimed at reducing European dependence on PGM by upscaling a novel cost- and energy-efficient, miniaturized PGM recovery and raw material production process.
Further improving the development of the PGM value chain, five of the PEACOC partners (MONOLITHOS, TECNALIA, Centro Ricerche Fiat, Comet Traitements and ULiège) have been developing the EIT RawMaterials Upscaling project CEBRA titled “Integrated Circular Economy Business model for decoupling Europe from PGM supply” since January 1st, 2020. This further collaboration through PEACOC represents yet one more step in the valorization of secondary precious metal resources in Europe.
PEACOC Value Chain and Partners
PEACOC will showcase a first-of-a-kind economically and environmentally viable pre-commercial metallurgical system for recovering Precious Metals (PMs), a metal family which includes PGMs as well as Au and Ag. PMs are highly important for the EU economy and identified as critical raw materials by the EC. The PEACOC concept is mainly based on previously developed recovery and refining technologies to TRL 5 in the PLATIRUS project (Deep Eutectic solvents based extraction and separation of PGMs, Microwave-assisted leaching and Gas Diffusion Electrocrystallization GDEx), which GDEx and MW technologies were flagged by the Innovation Radar initiative of the EC as excellent innovations and showed a significant cost reduction and lower environmental impact compared to state-of-the-art hydrometallurgical processes.
The PEACOC system will be demonstrated at pre-commercial scale at TRL7 with the capacity to treat ~50t of PMs concentrates/year by recovering PGM, Au and Ag from three types of end-of-life products respectively : Autocatalysts, PCBAs and Photovoltaic panels. PEACOC project activities will be carried out over a 4-year time frame with the implementation of three successive phases : small-scale optimization, upscaling and full scale pre-commercial piloting.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 958302. |
