Technological Metal Recycling Idea using

Fish Sperm

A process developed by a Japanese team could perhaps be the key ingredient for extraction

of technological metals. This process utilizes fish sperm to recycle and extract tech metals

from things; such as electronic waste and magnets.

This particular process involves the use of a delicacy in Japan – milt and salmon – the sperm

of which is used to separate and recover several types of tech metals, and is applicable in

numerous aqueous solutions. This has revolutionized the extraction process, making it a

much cheaper and green alternative as

compared to the traditional extraction

method using chemicals.

This is not the first time sea life or its

DNA has been applied in uncommon

ways. The strangest of these

discoveries was the mass production of

silver nanoparticles using fireproof

coatings.

Industries today, are more inclined

towards using eco friendly methods

instead of traditional metal extraction

methods, to avoid damaging the

environment. A fine example of this

initiative is the use of hydrometallurgy rather than pyrometallurgy, including bio-mining with

the help of unique bacteria to recover

various types of metals, and even

extracting gold, using simple sugars.

The Japanese team that discovered

the process is based at the University

of Tokyo and is being led by Yoshio

Takahashi, along with the help of

other institutions in Japan. The

original study was regarding the

absorption of tech metals on the

surface of bacterial cells and

discovered the crucial role of

phosphate site in binding the ions of

these metals. This provided an

incentive to study fish DNA that also

has a phosphate site which can be used to extract technological metals.

Since DNA extracts are dissolvable, it needed to be attached to a solid substrate like

cellulose. On the other hand, milt is in solid state and doesn’t dissolve. It is also easily

available at a cheap price; the Japanese fishing industry discards thousands of tons of milt

every year.

The team then created a powdered

form of milt and a solution as well

that contained dysprosium,

neodymium, and trivalent iron – the

main metals that the neodymium

magnets are composed off. They also

created other referenced solutions.

When the powdered form of milt was

added to this particular solution, it

was detected that the metal ions in the

solution had considerable affinity

towards for the phosphate in the milt

powder. Tech metals where

subsequently recovered using the

powdered form of milt along with the

use of centrifugation and acid.

Jean-Claude Bünzli; an investigator of technological metals at the Swiss federal institute of

technology, Lausanne; mentioned that the entire idea of using cheap milt glands in order to

separate and absorb technological metals from the iron found in scrap magnets, is interesting.

While the proposed standard operating procedure doesn’t suppress magnets dissolved in

strong acids, it still deserves attention. He also added that scaling up these operations using

this technique could very well prove to be problematic, but it might be useful for removing

tech metals in alloys, like printed circuit boards, hard disks, and cell phones.

Yoshio Takahashi indeed recognizes that the recovery of tech metals from scraped magnets

isn’t big business, but the salmon milt technique may very well be suited for recycling and

extracting other elements on a sizable scale. However, the team has not yet revealed the

effectiveness of the process on other elements. But Takahashi seems quite confident that

capacity of ion-exchange in salmon milt is quite high.

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