"Thought It Was Just Waste"... Urban Mining Pours Out 99.99% Pure Gold [Reportage]

Toricom’s Asan Plant: A Leader in Precious Metal Recycling

Extracting Raw Materials from Industrial Waste such as Wafers
Repeated Melting, Reduction, and Compression Processes
Minimizing Carbon Emissions and Ensuring Stable Resource Suppl

On June 11, inside the casting room of Toricom, a precious metal recycling company based in Asan, Chungcheongnam-do, the door of a 1,200-degree casting furnace swung open, releasing a wave of intense heat as red-hot liquid was poured into a ceramic crucible. As the thick liquid filled the casting mold, the red glow quickly faded and solidified into a golden mass. This is the moment when the dust of electronic waste is brushed away and a flawless gold bar with 99.99% purity is born.

99.99% Pure Gold Bar Produced from Raw Materials Such as Semiconductor Wafers and Electronic Waste. LS MnM

The 1-kilogram gold bar, worth approximately 200 million won, does not come from minerals extracted from a massive mine. Instead, it originates from waste resources such as broken semiconductor wafers and end-of-life printed circuit boards (PCBs) generated by Korea's semiconductor, electronics, and automotive industries. Various types of industrial waste are rigorously processed and reborn as gold.

The process begins with extracting raw materials from waste. It starts with a physical pre-treatment stage to strip the scrap, followed by the use of solvents to extract materials such as gold and silver. The solvent, a special solution called aqua regia made by mixing nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, is used for the dissolution process. Afterward, sodium metabisulfite is used to reduce only the gold into a solid. The resulting ochre-colored solid product resembles clay and is gold with 95% purity. This process is repeated several times, and after compression, high-purity gold is obtained.

Toricom, an affiliate of LS MnM, has been supporting the resource circulation ecosystem for over 30 years by extracting valuable metals from domestic waste resources. Its core strength lies in its wet refining method, which recovers precious metals such as gold, silver, and palladium, rather than dry smelting. While dry smelting, which uses high temperatures, allows for large-scale batch processing, it is best suited for raw materials obtained through mining. Wet refining, performed at temperatures below 100 degrees Celsius, consumes less energy compared to dry smelting and is mainly used for recovering high-purity precious metals since refining and smelting occur simultaneously.

Toricom CEO Hong Hyungki emphasized, "Securing a virtuous cycle for domestic recycled resources is extremely important, as it minimizes carbon emissions through resource recycling, eliminates illegal overseas export channels, and ensures stable resource procurement." He added, "In a country with virtually no mines, the economic value of Toricom, which has established a virtuous resource cycle, goes far beyond simple financial performance and holds infinite value."

In May 2024, Toricom became the first company in Korea to obtain international standard certification for 100% recycled gold, and last year expanded the scope of its certifications to include silver, palladium, platinum, and secondary materials. Beginning this year, the company has introduced numerically controlled automated processing equipment to precisely manufacture products in a wider variety of shapes.

Urban mining is a strategically important industry for Korea, which relies on imports for most of its rare metal resources. By recovering metals from waste electronic products and industrial waste, raw materials can be secured without mining, thus reducing supply chain risks. Recognizing this, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy has been pushing policies since 2022 to utilize recycled materials as circular resources, while the Ministry of Environment and Energy is working to establish an industrial ecosystem where smelting companies, raw material collectors, and intermediate processors grow together.

Inside the Toricom factory located in Asan City, Chungcheongnam-do, on the 11th, there were semiconductor wafers and printed circuit boards (PCBs) at the end of their service life piled up. These products go through solvent and dissolution processes to be reduced to gold with 95% purity. Then, through the casting process, they become 99.99% pure gold bars. Photo by Lee Hyun-joo

However, industry experts point out that it is urgent to strengthen customs procedures to prevent the illegal overseas export of domestic recycling raw materials. There are repeated cases where waste metals are falsely declared as scrap iron and high-value-added materials such as gold and palladium are mixed in and shipped out. There are concerns that if resources painstakingly collected in Korea are not properly utilized and instead flow abroad, the very foundation of the urban mining industry could be undermined.

There are also challenges from a technology ecosystem perspective. Urban mining is an industry in which multiple companies must cooperate across several stages, from raw material collection to pre-treatment, smelting, and refining. The technological capabilities of a single large company are not sufficient; the overall supply chain relies on the capabilities of small collectors and intermediate processors. An industry official said, "Because technology related to urban mining cannot be advanced by the technical capacity of a single company, it is necessary to promote industry-academia collaboration and support research and development (R&D) by small companies to improve their capabilities overall."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.