C A S E S T U D Y

Everything is barcoded and a certificate is issued for each piece of equipment to guarantee it has been destroyed. This process ensures that no one, no matter how clever, can ever get the data off the old hard drives or circuit boards.

Unfortunately, too much electronic waste is still being put into containers and exported to places like China, India or Japan. There, the waste gets processed using methods that are terrible for the environment. These methods include incineration, which releases chronic pollution into the atmosphere; acid bathing, which uses strong acids to reclaim valuable metals but pollutes the ground and water systems; or, simply sending the waste to landfills, creating its own set of widespread environmental problems.

Where does the shredded equipment go and what happens to it next?

After we shred the equipment onsite and provide a certificate, we take the shredded material to one of our warehouses. We then use a machine called a ball mill to smash it down even further into tiny, pellet-sized pieces. This is a very precise process because we need the surface size of the pellets to be just right for what happens next.

Once the material has been destroyed a second time, we put the pellets into one-tonne bags and transport them to our biorefinery in Cambridge. There, the material goes from an industrial process to a biochemical one. We put the pellets into large tanks with water and bacteria, carefully controlling the temperature and other conditions.

THE FACT THAT WE COULD BE A MAJOR PART OF THE GREEN AGENDA, EVEN THOUGH WE KNEW IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT AND VERY EXPENSIVE, WAS A KEY MOTIVATOR.

been used for a long time in mining in places like Australia, China and India to recover copper from slag heaps. There are other companies who have tried to recycle tech equipment, but they often use hybrid methods, mixing acids with a partial bio-process.

What makes our approach unique is that we’ ve developed an end-to-end, patented biochemical process. We’ ve filed five patents and haven’ t been challenged on any of them, which is a good sign. We’ ve been working on this for about five years with some very clever scientists and universities.

Our process has two main parts: industrial preparation and biochemical processing. The industrial preparation is highly skilled and precise, involving all the security, logistics and specialised equipment needed to prepare the shredded material correctly. If you were to just throw a circuit board into our process, it wouldn’ t work. The material’ s size and surface area have to be perfect for the biochemical stage.

The second part, the biochemical process, also requires a very specific

mix of bacteria, heat, light and stirring to work. While we’ ve used some off-theshelf equipment, we’ ve had to try multiple things to find the right combination that works. So, anyone who tries to compete with us would not only have to contend with our patents but would also have to learn how to master this highly specific and complex process from scratch.

In these tanks, we use our process to remove the valuable metals in three stages. First, we remove the tin and lead, then all the copper and finally, we focus on the precious metals to recover as much as we can. This is a very green and effective biochemical way of extracting these metals from the circuit boards.

Are other companies in Europe using a similar recycling process for the data centre industry?

The technology we use, called bioleaching, isn’ t entirely new; it has

www. intelligentdatacentres. com 15