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Component self-assembly for reciprocal urban mining

Nature Sustainability volume 8, pages 1026–1036 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Urban mines—stockpiles of materials in discarded waste—include various metals, oxides, polymers and halogens with diverse implications in terms of materials sustainability, which are reflected in different environmental–economic–efficiency trade-offs when recycling them. Here we leverage the diverse composition of urban mines to develop ‘reciprocal recycling’—a self-assembly strategy that uses urban mine components to support their own recycling to ultimately activate sustainable urban mining. We screened tens of physicochemical componential interactions available for multimetal co-recovery, halogenated pollutants elimination and polymer conversion. Self-assembly prototypes with four fundamental componential interactions were presented for reciprocal recycling of representative urban mines. Under the guidance of revealed physicochemical interaction mechanisms, the reciprocal recycling process design enabled >96% recovery of copper–platinum–palladium–rhodium, >99% suppression of brominated pollutants and mediated epoxy resin conversion. The self-assembly strategy showcased joint environmental–economic–efficiency benefits and high flexibility, paving the way to sustainable urban mining and improving material circularity.

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Fig. 1: Urban mining status and self-assembly strategy of components.
Fig. 2: Important componential interactions for reciprocal recycling under dry-thermal conditions.
Fig. 3: Components self-assembly based on organic bromine–oxide interaction for brominated pollutants elimination.
Fig. 4: Self-assembly strategy based on polymer–oxide interactions for polymer chemical recycling.
Fig. 5: Components self-assembly based on oxide–oxide and metal–metal interactions for metal co-recovery.
Fig. 6: Joint environmental–economic–efficiency benefits with components self-assembly strategy for reciprocal urban mining and strategy extension.

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All data are available in the main text or the Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (52170136). We are grateful to Shanghai Super Postdoctoral Incentive Program (2022343), Ningda of Precious Metals and Shanghai Xinjinqiao Environmental Protection. We acknowledge X. Shi, K. Shengnan, G. Yu and D. Xue from Instrumental Analysis Center of Shanghai Jiao Tong University for their technical support and W. Qinmeng and L. Zhongchen from Central South University for FactSage simulation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Green Papermaking and Resource Recycling, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Qingming Song, Shuyu Chen, Xuehong Yuan, Honghuai Sun, Ya Liu & Zhenming Xu

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  1. Qingming Song
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  2. Shuyu Chen
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  3. Xuehong Yuan
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Contributions

Conceptualization: Z.X., Q.S. Methodology: Q.S., S.C., X.Y., H.S. Investigation: Q.S., S.C. Visualization: Q.S., Y.L. Supervision: Z.X. Writing—original draft: Q.S., H.S. Writing—review and editing: Q.S., H.S., Z.X.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhenming Xu.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Jinxing Chen, Qingbin Song and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Components self-assembly design for WPCBs and SACs reciprocal recycling.

PCBs are ubiquitous and essential parts in almost all electrical and electronic devices, which consist of copper foil and glass fiber-reinforced epoxy resin (containing brominated flame retardants) with surface-mounted electric components. WPCBs pyrometallurgical recycling requires the enrichment of dispersed metals separated from nonmetal fraction, the suppression of toxic brominates and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and the effective recycling of polymers. Automobile catalysts are indispensable for emission control of automobiles where nanosized PGM particles dispersed on cordierite substrates enable NOx and CO transformation. The typical composition of real WPCBs and SACs used in this study was shown in Extended Data Fig. 1 and Supplementary Fig. 17. According to their composition characteristics, physicochemical properties, and recycling requirements, large-size metals in WPCBs facilitated co-recovery of PGM nanoparticles in SACs during smelting, the oxide components in both wastes constituted optimal slags with supplementary SiO2 and CaO, the elimination of brominated pollutants in WPCBs via coexisting oxides, and the oxide-mediated epoxy resin transformation.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Debromination mechanisms via a gaseous and oxide-mediated radical route.

(a) Pyro-GC/MS analysis of 2-bromophenol with the absence and presence of CaO at 600 °C, helium atmosphere. (b) The gaseous debromination route without CaO. Gibbs free energy change for gaseous molecular reaction was calculated at M06-2X(D3)/Def2tzvp level using Gaussian. For reference, the ΔG from VASP calculation is ~69 kcal/mol. (c) One of the CaO promoted debromination routes through C-Br homolysis with lower Gibbs free energy change compared to the gaseous route.

Source data

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes 1–8, Figs. 1–30, Tables 1–14 and Schemes 1–5.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Data 1

Computational structure and energy data.

Supplementary Data 2

The calculated data of collision distance, nanoparticle movement distance and settlement velocity for metal–metal interaction analysis.

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Source Data Fig. 3

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 4

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 5

Statistical source data.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 2

Statistical source data.

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Song, Q., Chen, S., Yuan, X. et al. Component self-assembly for reciprocal urban mining. Nat Sustain 8, 1026–1036 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01611-y

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