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 doesnt 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 Bnzli; 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 doesnt 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
isnt 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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