Explainers, teardowns, and myth-busting on waste management systems and green engineering.
Litech mounts a flat sensor beneath an existing conveyor and reads magnetic signatures every millisecond, aiming to flag concealed lithium cells before they reach the shredder. The mechanism is elegant. The numbers are missing.
Siderophores bind metals with extraordinary selectivity because bacteria evolved them to scavenge iron. Repurposing that chemistry for gallium and rare earths in e-waste is elegant, and the cost per gram is the whole question.
Conventional battery recycling dissolves cathodes in hot mineral acid. Microwave-assisted leaching in a deep eutectic solvent does the same job at lower temperature, in minutes, with a solvent you can in principle reuse.