HOW HIRING A SPECIALIST PRECIOUS METAL REFINERY CAN BENEFIT YOUR BUSINESS
Precious metal refining is the separation of precious metals from noble-metalliferous materials. It is to be distinguished from other processes such as smelting and calcining in that those two involve a chemical change to the raw material, whereas in refining, the final material is usually identical chemically to the original one, only it is purer.
There are many kinds of materials that yield pure gold, platinum, or silver when refined.
Electronic Scrap:
A very popular and lucrative refining asset. This includes circuit boards, including CPUs, RAM, pins, and other computer components.
Catalytic Converters:
An excellent source of platinum group metals, such as palladium and rhodium.
Dental Crowns Extracted teeth, dental crowns and bridges can contain amalgam and precious metal such as gold and palladium.
Jewellery’s Waste Grindings, bench sweeps, polishing sweeps, floor sweeps and, in general, any leftover of the jewellery industry.
X-ray Film:
X-ray film has silver in it and is often purchased and collected just for its silver content.
In recent years, precious metal refining has evolved into a sophisticated process that uses advanced equipment to separate precious metals from a wide range of minerals, compounds, chemicals, manufacturing scrap and used items. High heat, pressure and chemicals are used to remove impurities from the precious metal.
A refinery receives the raw material (scraps) and re-liquefies the metal in a hot furnace, then adds various chemicals to the molten substance to separate the precious metals from the other less precious components.
The pure gold, silver, palladium and platinum is then recycled into fabricated products. The recovery of these precious metals is no small issue. A modern recycling facility can recover as much as 95 percent of precious metals contained in the original product.
However, current recovery rates of precious metals are still relatively small. For example, according to a recent study published in the US, only eight percent of cell phones and 38 percent of computers are currently recycled.
According to the United Nations Environment Program, gold, silver, palladium and other precious metals are rarely recycled in Europe, too. Every year around €5 billion are lost in this way. The massive growth in the manufacture of electronic products means that this waste of resources threatens to grow even greater in the next decades.
SO, WHAT ARE THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC ADVANTAGES OF HIRING A PROFESSIONAL REFINERY TO RECYCLE YOUR PRECIOUS METALS?
1. Refining precious metals helps the environment.
It increases metal sustainability through the mitigation of environmental and health-related impacts of mining, it reduced the overall energy demand and it contributes to the extension of lifetime, and preservation, of valuable primary geological resources. Electronics recycling is critical in diverting solid waste and supporting zero landfill initiatives. Also highly significant, electronics recycling helps eliminate toxic scrap. While it constitutes a minority of solid waste, it represents up to 70 percent of toxic waste.
2. An expert precious metal refining company can offer the latest state of the art technologies, a wealth of knowledge and extensive technical know-how.
This will help you maximise the value of your scrap material, saving you money and time.
3. A specialist company offers full control on the entire production and refining cycles.
In a business to business environment, the user of the metal-containing product returns the spent product directly to a refiner who recovers the metals and returns them to the owner for a new product cycle. Examples of these cycles are found with chemical and oil refining process catalysts. Typically, the metals remain the property of the user for the entire cycle and the metal-refiner conducts recycling as a service, resulting in very small metal losses.
4. An experienced precious metal refining company conducts quality control and validates contents.
When a refinery takes a sample of material, it is usually divided up into three parts. One part of the sample goes to the refinery’s assay lab, one part goes to the customer, and one part is sealed in tamper evident storage in the event of a discrepancy. If the customer and the refinery cannot come to an agreement on the assay, they will have the sealed sample sent to another third-party assayer.
5. By hiring a precious metal refiner, you may be able to turn seemingly insignificant scraps into profit for your company.
Did you know that electronic goods can contain up to 40–50 times the amount of gold and precious metals than ores mined from the ground? There are over 320 tons of gold and greater than 7,500 tons of silver used each year to make new electronic products around the world. This is a significant opportunity to make money from scraps you would have wasted. Based on your material sample analysis, a specialist precious metal refiner will be able to send you a detailed profit preview — transparent and based on current rates of precious metals.
All Waste Matters offer specialist precious metal refining services to leading companies in a number of industry sectors. You can send your material into us for a free assay. We’ll make an offer based upon the results. If you are not happy, we’ll return it the very same day. If you decide to go ahead, we offer a free collection service anywhere in the country.
Thanks to over 50 years of experience, we can provide the know-how and specialist techniques to ensure we return the maximum value of your material.
