Selective gold recovery from electronic waste: a review of modern trends in recycling

Abstract

The large usage of gold in mainly electronic, medical, and catalyst industries might lead to a gold crisis in the future if we only depend on natural mineral resources. The recovery of gold from recycling e-waste offers valuable feedback for the sustainable growth of mineral industries, as e-waste is a very good secondary metal resource. Owing to the substantial impact of gold on recycling’s profitability and its distinct properties and applications, we believe this review can fill existing knowledge gaps and cultivate a more profound comprehension of cleaner technologies aimed at recycling and recovering this invaluable resource from the e-waste. The present review gives a brief introduction to conventional methods and compares their efficiency in gold recovery. Then, it put extensive efforts into discussing the importance of different modern advanced techniques such as selective adsorption-precipitation, MOF, solvent extraction, bio-recovery, thin-film, gel, photocatalytic, and plating-based selective Au recovery from the e-waste materials. © 2025 Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum.