There may be something new about the process here, but there are other processing plants that recover gold from e-waste. Umicore has a plant in Belgium which does this.
Do you know much about the process in Belgium? I've been trying to learn more about proper handling of e-waste in the country; there's not much information available. The companies I know just chuck it in the all-purpose bin with batteries removed.
The batteries are first separated from the phones; this happens elsewhere. The remainder of the phones arrive at the processing plant in Hoboken (near Antwerp) and are shredded.
Each batch of finely shredded material is analyzed for its content to determine value and to choose processing details.
After shredding and analysis, the material goes into a large (15 meter high) smelting oven. (The burning of plastic from the phones contributes to the heat, but it's not the main heat source. Probably natural gas?) Sulfur is recovered from the gasses coming from the oven to produce sulfuric acid, which is used in processes further downstream or sold.
The oven produces a batch of molten metal, which is then separated in stages through chemistry. E.g. oxygen is injected and some metals react with this and the oxides float to the top. A bunch of other chemistry is done. Some stuff may go to another oven.
The recovered metals are either returned to the supplier of the input material, or sold by Umicore itself. They sell gold at https://umicoregoldshop.be , though I'm not sure whether it's all from e-waste.
