Follow Yahoo News
Recommended Games
Feces contains gold worth millions
1 hour ago
Human
feces contains gold, seen here through a magnifier, and other precious
metals that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, experts say
(AFP Photo/Therence Koh)
Washington (AFP) - Human
feces contains gold and other precious metals that could be worth
hundreds of millions of dollars, experts say.
Now the trick is how to retrieve them -- a potential windfall that could also help save the planet.
"The
gold we found was at the level of a minimal mineral deposit," said
Kathleen Smith, of the US Geological Survey, after her team discovered
metals such as platinum, silver and gold in treated waste.
A
recent study by another group of experts in the field found that waste
from one million Americans could contain as much as $13 million worth of
metals.
Finding a way to
extract the metals could help the environment by cutting down on the
need for mining and reducing unwanted release of metals into the
environment.
"If you can get
rid of some of the nuisance metals that currently limit how much of
these biosolids we can use on fields and forests, and at the same time
recover valuable metals and other elements, that's a win-win," said
Smith.
"There are metals everywhere -- in your hair care products,
detergents, even nanoparticles that are put in socks to prevent bad
odors."
More than seven
million tons of biosolids come out of US wastewater facilities each
year: about half is used as fertilizer on fields and in forests and the
other half is incinerated or sent to landfills.
Smith and her team are on a mission to find out exactly what is in our waste.
"We
have a two-pronged approach," said Smith. "In one part of the study, we
are looking at removing some regulated metals from the biosolids that
limit their use for land application.
"In
the other part of the project, we're interested in collecting valuable
metals that could be sold, including some of the more technologically
important metals, such as vanadium and copper that are in cell phones,
computers and alloys."
The
findings were presented at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition
of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific
society, taking place in Denver through Thursday.
end quote from:
Feces contains gold worth millions
Human
feces contains gold and other precious metals that could be worth
hundreds of millions of dollars, experts say. "The gold we found was at
the level of a minimal mineral deposit," said Kathleen Smith, of the US
Geological Survey, after her team discovered metals such as platinum,
silver and…
AFP
No comments:
Post a Comment