Your Phone’s Sim Card Can Make Medicine Cheaper

Electronic devices are made up of a variety of expensive and rare materials, but the majority of them are dumped in e-waste landfills rather than being repurposed. This isn't because we lack the technology to recycle it; rather, it's because of things like cost control and process effectiveness. One type of phone component that frequently ends up in the trash without much attention paid to recycling is SIM cards. Now, researchers at Imperial College London have developed a technique for recycling SIM cards that may contribute to the decrease in the cost of pharmaceuticals. This enticing SIM recycling strategy aimed at the pharmaceutical business might be a lifesaver in a world where healthcare accessibility is in crisis mode, notably in the U.S. where Americans spend the highest price globally at $1,300 per year on medications. A gold complex, to be precise, is at the core of this intriguing solution. Gold coating is used on SIM cards because it is a superior electrical conductor. Additionally, it withstands corrosion considerably better over time than other valuable metals like silver. To extract a few grams of gold, however, you would need to collect thousands of SIM cards because the amount used is rather little. Both on a personal and a corporate level, that procedure is not particularly economically sensible. The most significant issue is the elaborate and costly extraction processes. Professors Paola Deplano and Angela Serpe of the University of Cagliari in Italy created a simple technique to recover gold and other precious metals from electronics as a result. [caption id="attachment_39276" align="alignnone" width="1200"] e-Sim[/caption]

How does it impact the pharmaceutical industry, then?

The good news is that gold is a superb catalyst, which means it can quicken chemical reactions. The aforementioned method uses chemically processing the e-waste, plastic stripping, and grinding to extract gold in a compound form, which isn't as valuable as the blingy metal itself. In actuality, it will be difficult to recover pure gold for use in electrical circuit boards from the gold compound created at the end of the procedure. Several brains from Imperial College London came up with a solution in this situation. They discovered a way to employ this recycled gold complex as a catalyst for pharmaceutical applications under the direction of professors James Wilton-Ely and Chris Braddock.

How it all functions?

The gold molecule was used by the scientists as a catalyst in numerous chemical processes to create pharmaceuticals like painkillers and anti-inflammatory treatments. To their surprise, the gold "waste" they had performed as well as or better than the catalysts that were currently being employed. [caption id="attachment_70936" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image: Imperial College London[/caption] Another important finding was that this gold compound made from used SIM cards could also be recycled, which increases its appeal as a cost-effective material. This is the first direct application in homogeneous catalysis of gold recovery products obtained from e-waste, according to a study that is currently published in ACS Publications. In comparison to commercial mining, this low-impact recovery method for recovering gold as a catalyst from used SIM cards and other waste electrical and electronic equipment is not only more cost-effective but also far more environmentally friendly. Cheaper medications due to leftover SIMs The gold catalyst, which is produced in the form of a black crystalline solid, is acquired, according to the article, "even unoptimized, small-scale production," which is substantially less expensive than the conventional methods now employed in the pharmaceutical business. Naturally, it has less of an impact on the environment than gold mining does. [caption id="attachment_70938" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image: Pixabay[/caption] The gold compounds are free of any organic contaminants even after they are retrieved using a straightforward chemical procedure after being utilized as catalysts during a batch of pharmaceutical manufacture. Simply put, they can be employed up to eight times to catalyze the manufacture of medicines without losing any of their potency. The team comes to the conclusion that "more sustainable and less expensive alternatives retrieved from millions of metric tons of e-waste currently consigned to landfill each year" can replace conventional gold catalysts. With widespread use, the pharmaceutical sector may very possibly receive benefits from this discovery, lowering the cost of medications. The world could undoubtedly use inventions like this one in a time when even the White House has to step in with an executive order to lower the price of prescription drugs. Another noteworthy initiative to recycle SIM cards was carried out by the Kids Non-Profit Organization (KNPO), who created safety reflectors from the recycled SIM cards. Their use was intended to reduce traffic collisions.