Selective recovery of gold from e-waste with 3D hierarchical porous amidoximated fabrics and its application in the reduction of 4-nitrophenol

Abstract

Recycling gold from waste provides an alternative path to meet the increasing global gold consumption, and gold catalysts account for a considerable portion of this recycling effort. In this study, amidoximated fabrics (AO-NWF) were fabricated with pre-irradiation graft polymerization method. Afterwards, we used an Intel Pentium CPU as a gold source and employed an integrated strategy for the in-situ fabrication and stabilization of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) on 3D hierarchical porous amidoxime fabrics (Au@AO-NWF) to catalyze the reduction of 4-nitrophenol in water. Au@AO-NWF showed remarkable and stable catalytic performance, recording a maximum reaction rate constant of 0.5994 min−1. Finally, the recovered gold could be further used in electronic equipment. Thus, a green, closed-loop utilization of gold was accomplished, which could help reduce electronic waste (e-waste) pollution, superfluous sources, and energy consumption to protect the environment. As a candidate for gold adsorption, the ability of AO-NWF to extract gold from water was also evaluated in detail.