RARE’s Reward Crowdfunding to Turn e-Waste into Rare Earths

The fundraising of the first of three campaigns planned for this edition of Bicocca University crowdfunding starts on Produzioni dal Basso.

This is the RARE project, which will have sixty days to raise €5,000, but already crossed the 50% goal will trigger the contribution of the partner company that will cover the remainder of the sum.

From batteries for hybrid cars to fiber optics, from computers to smartphones, everything works by using metals that are among the rare earths, a class of chemical elements used in electronic devices, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and more, whose extraction from minerals requires an expensive and polluting process.

Being able to find them at lower costs than at present and containing the impact on the environment is a decisive challenge for Europe, which is largely dependent on imports of these materials. And it is even more so from the perspective of the ecological transition.

Meeting this challenge is a group of young researchers from the University of Milan-Bicocca. The system developed employs two types of waste: thanks to nanotechnology, rare earths are “extracted” from disused electronic devices using a device made with porous material from chemical and steel industry waste.

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The crowdfunding campaign for the RARE project

The RARE project participated in the fifth Bicocca Università del Crowdfunding call, the University’s alternative finance program that promotes the development of innovative projects and business ideas, and cashed in with the support of EIT RawMaterials, a European consortium dealing with non-fossil raw materials to support the energy transition that has been a partner of #BiUniCrowd since this year.

The RARE team is formed by Lorenzo Viganò and Daniele Montini, doctoral students in Materials Science and Nanotechnology, and draws on the experience, both in the application and popularization fields, of Barbara Di Credico, associate professor of chemical foundations of technologies in the Materials Science department.

Communication is handled by Jessica Bosisio, a doctoral student in Economics and Management of Innovation and Sustainability at the University of Parma. In recent weeks, the researchers have taken part in team-building activities that Bicocca University of Crowdfunding carries out in collaboration with the association Street Is Culture.

How the RARE process works

“Currently,” the team members explain, “the components of electronic devices are only minimally reused. Materials such as copper, aluminum, and iron are recycled, but few manage to recycle rare earths. Recovering industrial waste to create new raw materials suitable for capturing these chemical elements would lower the costs involved in other recovery methods.

This also promotes an idea of a circular economy where waste is not discarded, but an attempt is made to give it a second life. Through specific treatments of this waste, rare earth ions can be transferred to water and subsequently captured by our device.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine,” notes Fabio Pegorin, Business Development Manager at EIT RawMaterials, “has further highlighted the importance for the European Union to be able to strengthen local supply chains for a stable and sustainable supply of metals and minerals needed for the energy transition. It is imperative, therefore, not only to support projects that aim to sustainably mine these strategic materials but also to incentivize new approaches and technologies such as those proposed by the RARE project that aims to extract them from products that contain them and have reached end-of-life, all from a circular economy perspective.”

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(Featured image by WikimediaImages via Pixabay)

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