Modern Mining

As Neil Young crossed oceans and went to Hollywood singing, “I've been a miner for a heart of gold,” so others interested in industrial research are finding mining opportunities in surprising places. Platinum, palladium, and rhodium from catalytic converters that help reduce vehicle exhaust pollution can be mined by sweeping up road dust. Other metals like copper, iron, and aluminum can be found beneath our cities, in dated discarded cable and infrastructure. Extracting these and other precious metals profitably and in environmentally safe ways are the main issues. This kind of mining is basically recycling.

Some kinds of metals are recovered by separation with strong acids or melting and these methods, while working efficiently, are damaging to the environment. Living organisms, metal munching bacteria and seaweed can be more environmentally friendly through use in a process called bioleaching, which extracts precious metals including gold, nickel, and zinc from industrial and pharmaceutical plants’ solvent waste.

Maybe Neil Young didn’t need to travel so far in his search for that heart of gold (he is getting old, at age 68 now) because it’s right under our feet.