Unique method to metalize E-waste milled powder

[Ayham Hafez]

Borax and flourspar consume graphite crucibles very quickly, I noticed new method to metalize E-waste ash used in Indonesia, with this method we can start chemical PM's recovering after collecting the metals shots or we can remelt them to make copper anode without consuming a lot of crucibles.

This is the video link:



By this teqnique I think we can process large e-waste quantity in short time, I didn't test it, looking for members thoughts about it.

In this video they just use steel cone, but I watched other videos using clay pot with a small hole in the bottom of it,and others use steel cone built with refractory material, but the idea is same, after they mix E-waste ash with borax and soda ash,they fire the steel cone with charcoal and air blower then start to add ash, after ash melted it collected from the water bucket under the cone, charcoal with good air source can reach 1300 c temperature, so we can make sure that all E-waste particles will be melted

 

[4metals]

I am trying to figure out exactly what they are doing here. First I expect that whatever they are burning is highly flammable because it burns with the forced air feed all while a feed of water flows through the funnel.

At :31 seconds they show a tray of cylindrical shaped material that is just like what is in the funnel burning. Is that the e-waste ash which has somehow been transformed into the cylinders to burn?

If they have been burned once, and pressed into the cylinders, I do not see how they could be as flammable as they appear in the video.
I assume the function of this piece of equipment is to generate a fine ash which would accumulate in the bottom of the funnel. This ash is washed out of the funnel and eventually collected in the round trays shown as a mud. As no tray is shown under the funnel I have to assume it drains on to the ground where it is shoveled up when it accumulates, after mother earth assists by draining away any excess water.

To start, I guess the question is what are the cylindrical e-waste cylinders made from, as this does not resemble a type of scrap I am familiar with?

It is good that they play the music which helps us to identify a region where this is being done. Not the kind of music I hear anywhere near my home. I am glad no one is trying this environmentally disastrous method close to where I live.

 

[Ayham Hafez]

I am trying to figure out exactly what they are doing here. First I expect that whatever they are burning is highly flammable because it burns with the forced air feed all while a feed of water flows through the funnel.

At :31 seconds they show a tray of cylindrical shaped material that is just like what is in the funnel burning. Is that the e-waste ash which has somehow been transformed into the cylinders to burn?

If they have been burned once, and pressed into the cylinders, I do not see how they could be as flammable as they appear in the video.
I assume the function of this piece of equipment is to generate a fine ash which would accumulate in the bottom of the funnel. This ash is washed out of the funnel and eventually collected in the round trays shown as a mud. As no tray is shown under the funnel I have to assume it drains on to the ground where it is shoveled up when it accumulates, after mother earth assists by draining away any excess water.

To start, I guess the question is what are the cylindrical e-waste cylinders made from, as this does not resemble a type of scrap I am familiar with?

It is good that they play the music which helps us to identify a region where this is being done. Not the kind of music I hear anywhere near my home. I am glad no one is trying this environmentally disastrous method close to where I live.

Here another detailed video for same method

 

[Yggdrasil]

I guess the black cylinders are pressed charcoal.
But I cringe after seeing these videos.

 

[4metals]

But I cringe after seeing these videos.

As do I. All for a bit over a half ounce of gold.

The second video does not show how they get from the burnt crushed boards to the cylinders.

A large percentage is burnt off with little concern for the workers or the surroundings.

When they get to the point of having a copper based shot why don’t they go to a copper cell.

I never imagined how much pollution can be created by having access to cheap nitric acid.

 

[Ayham Hafez]

As do I. All for a bit over a half ounce of gold.

The second video does not show how they get from the burnt crushed boards to the cylinders.

A large percentage is burnt off with little concern for the workers or the surroundings.

When they get to the point of having a copper based shot why don’t they go to a copper cell.

I never imagined how much pollution can be created by having access to cheap nitric acid.

We can enhance their method to be environment friendly, like use pyrolizing reactor to reduce smoke, main idea here to discuss is the cone or cylinder furnace, is it good idea to use it since it has 2 main features, easy continuous feeding of ash and second is reduce cost of damaged graphite crucibles because of borax.


They use normal clay to smelt the ash, clay pot cost is nothing comparing to cheapest graphite crucible, I watched other videos which they use clay dishes to smelt ash to get metal button, since clay crucible is cheap each time they break the crucible to get the metal button then they go to chemical process.


Copper electrolysis cell for small refiners is a headache because of three things, first, the initial cost to build it "cheapest price I got for refining 1400 gram per hour was 5,000 USD", second is the copper cell need following up on daily basis and need some chemical engineering knowledge to keep it run well "like how to make titration", third is that copper cell need long time to get the PM's unlike direct dissolving copper with nitric acid, for me time is much more worth than the cost of nitric acid.

 

[Yggdrasil]

As do I. All for a bit over a half ounce of gold.

The second video does not show how they get from the burnt crushed boards to the cylinders.

A large percentage is burnt off with little concern for the workers or the surroundings.

When they get to the point of having a copper based shot why don’t they go to a copper cell.

I never imagined how much pollution can be created by having access to cheap nitric acid.

The Cylinders are the charcoal, you see them burn them into a blaze and start adding the burnt milled powder on top.
One sees the greenish flames from the copper as they push past and through the layer of PCB powder.

 

[Yggdrasil]

We can enhance their method to be environment friendly, like use pyrolizing reactor to reduce smoke, main idea here to discuss is the cone or cylinder furnace, is it good idea to use it since it has 2 main features, easy continuous feeding of ash and second is reduce cost of damaged graphite crucibles because of borax.


They use normal clay to smelt the ash, clay pot cost is nothing comparing to cheapest graphite crucible, I watched other videos which they use clay dishes to smelt ash to get metal button, since clay crucible is cheap each time they break the crucible to get the metal button then they go to chemical process.


Copper electrolysis cell for small refiners is a headache because of three things, first, the initial cost to build it "cheapest price I got for refining 1400 gram per hour was 5,000 USD", second is the copper cell need following up on daily basis and need some chemical engineering knowledge to keep it run well "like how to make titration", third is that copper cell need long time to get the PM's unlike direct dissolving copper with nitric acid, for me time is much more worth than the cost of nitric acid.

They do not smelt in the clay crucible.
They do the smelting without flux in the cone "furnace".
They add charcoal and ignite it to temperature and then start adding the burnt and milled PCB powder and as it "smelts" it drips through into the water bucket under.
Then they part it with Nitric and melt the remaining Gold after washing (with HCl?) in the clay crucible with Borax.

At least that is how I see it.
Since I do not understand Indonesian/Malay, that is what I get out of it.

 

[4metals]

Copper electrolysis cell for small refiners is a headache because of three things, first, the initial cost to build it "cheapest price I got for refining 1400 gram per hour was 5,000 USD", second is the copper cell need following up on daily basis and need some chemical engineering knowledge to keep it run well "like how to make titration", third is that copper cell need long time to get the PM's unlike direct dissolving copper with nitric acid, for me time is much more worth than the cost of nitric acid.

You are missing a few costs in your analysis. First off a ton of typical circuit boards as shown in the video's has between 250 and 300 pounds of copper. You are not recovering any copper and even at the deposition rate of 1400 gr/hr you are looking at 500 pounds a week of copper metal you are overlooking. And copper is going for about $4 per pound and projected to go up. And copper does not dissolve in acid efficiently as silver. So you are using a lot of nitric and generating a lot of NO_x in the process. A cell that costs $5,000 will process all of the gold and silver in circuits you are refining and you will get the silver as well as the gold and any PGM's that may be in there (not a lot). You will be able to clean out the slimes to process your recovery every week and recover all of the PM's in slimes for recovery. So instead of using lots of nitric acid daily, you will use nitric and aqua regia one day a week to recover slimes, eliminating the labor to part the copper alloy as done in the video.

As far as chemical engineering, that was done in the cell design, you need to titrate the cell to control it. Or titrate the copper sulfate concentration and maintain it with acid additions. This type of titration does not require an overwhelming knowledge of chemistry.

If you consider acid costs, waste treatment costs, if any, volume of waste to deal with, and labor, you will likely offset those costs with sale of pure copper and recovery of silver from the slimes. If one cell for $5,000 will handle 2 tons of boards a week you can save in more ways than you likely realize. Maybe enough to offset crucible costs in a one step process you currently have.

 

[4metals]

They do the smelting without flux in the cone "furnace".
They add charcoal and ignite it to temperature and then start adding the burnt and milled PCB powder and as it "smelts" it drips through into the water bucket under.

So the first video was very misleading. The flow through that large funnel was metallic copper and pm's, not a stream of water. The large round tubs were burnt e-waste, and the cylinders were charcoal pressed into shape to provide heat.

I took a screen-shot of them adding a white powder to the burnt e scrap. Any ideas what that is?

 

[Yggdrasil]

So the first video was very misleading. The flow through that large funnel was metallic copper and pm's, not a stream of water. The large round tubs were burnt e-waste, and the cylinders were charcoal pressed into shape to provide heat.

I took a screen-shot of them adding a white powder to the burnt e scrap. Any ideas what that is?

View attachment 62137

I did not notice that.
In retrospect it seems the burnt PCB powder is moist, so maybe they mix it with a bit of water and some Flux to make it adhere to each other?

 

[Ayham Hafez]

So the first video was very misleading. The flow through that large funnel was metallic copper and pm's, not a stream of water. The large round tubs were burnt e-waste, and the cylinders were charcoal pressed into shape to provide heat.

I took a screen-shot of them adding a white powder to the burnt e scrap. Any ideas what that is?

View attachment 62137

I watched couple videos for them (different Indonesian channels), some videos they use soda ash, borax and potassium nitrate, other videos use only borax in little amount only 1 part of borax to 3 parts of E-waste ash(you can use YouTube auto translate to understand them), also I noticed that some times they wash the e-waste ash and pan with water and sometimes not. Also in one video I noticed that they mill the copper shots after it been collected from the bucket under the cone furnace then they pan it to remove slags.


I totally agree with you regard the copper cell, but in my country the pure copper only sold for 5$ similar to copper wires, cause exporting copper is not allowed and there is no factories consume copper at all, all copper exported illegally so cost of exporting is very high, so imagine how much I will loose when I want to change my electrolyte (I will buy copper sulphate from outside my country so its price not equivalent to local copper price) I thought about making copper sulphate my self to get benefit from the low copper price in the local market but it will be another headache fo me), with some calculations I noticed that consumed nitric acid cost will be less than copper cell cost + its running cost.

Let's say we will use this method to make copper shots, then we will use these shots to melt copper anodes, will it be effective? Or smelting ash in graphite crucible then pour it in cone mold to collect the copper metal cone then melt again to make copper anode will be better?

Edited to add:

I noticed that all Indonesian channels use same method and there are hundreds of videos on YouTube, also they use it with gold ore processing

 

[kurtak]

Borax and flourspar consume graphite crucibles very quickly,

First of all if you are using "graphite" crucibles for smelting you are using the wrong crucibles - graphite is ok for melting but not so good for smelting

For smelting you at the very least want "good quality" clay/graphite crucibles such as these -----

https://www.morganmms.com/en-gb/products/crucibles/morganite/salamander-super/

And as a side note - always buy good quality crucibles & not cheap budget crucibles - cheap budget crucibles only last about half as long as good quality crucibles

If you are using aggressive fluxes you want to go with something like silicon/carbide crucibles - like these ------

https://www.morganmms.com/en-gb/products/crucibles/morganite/starrbide/

When smelting you want to get crucibles that fit you smelting needs/applications & there are multiple crucible types to choose from ------------

https://www.morganmms.com/en-gb/products/crucibles/

Concerning life span of crucibles - you get what you pay for meaning cheap budget crucibles = shorter life span & good quality (cost more) = longer life span

And - you want to match the crucible type to you application

Kurt

 

[Martijn]

Let's say we will use this method to make copper shots, then we will use these shots to melt copper anodes, will it be effective?

Yes. as 4metals said. way better than a nitric bath

 

[Ayham Hafez]

Here another technique that help reducing the cost of graphite crucibles.

 

[4metals]

First off I love the way they suck you into watching. Start with a picture of refined bars neatly stacked.
Then after watching the entire video, you see the yield;

No mention that to get from photo 1 to photo 2 will take a lifetime!

Now to questions and observations about this method. First off I have first hand experience refining e-waste by incineration and electrolytic recovery. And in all cases I have had payable sweeps generated by the fines coming off the process as well as the majority of the values being in the metallic fraction.

That said, what happens to all of the fines after the process? It would indeed be interesting to take a sample of them, dry and mill them, and assay the powder. Likely they are tossing values by ignoring them.

Once the burnt ashes have been dried and sifted, I can melt the copper. based bullion directly by melting the oversize off the screen. That avoids the entire process shown in this video.

As an experiment I would do less crushing and screen it first to prevent the very fine gold pieces from falling through the screen. Then I would melt those parts and de-slag it. Then I would crush the balance the rest of the way to something on the order of -60 mesh and assay the powder. This would tell me if crushing completely puts more values in the slag than a slight crush (less time) followed by a re-sift.

I think Ayham would benefit tremendously from learning the fire assay process and using it to fine tune his process. We could easily open a how to fire assay thread to help with that. Although the topic has been covered here some years back.

I do enjoy these video's because they show us how others do the same or similar processes and allows us to comment and learn.

 

[Ayham Hafez]

First off I love the way they suck you into watching. Start with a picture of refined bars neatly stacked.View attachment 62149
Then after watching the entire video, you see the yield;
View attachment 62150
No mention that to get from photo 1 to photo 2 will take a lifetime!

Now to questions and observations about this method. First off I have first hand experience refining e-waste by incineration and electrolytic recovery. And in all cases I have had payable sweeps generated by the fines coming off the process as well as the majority of the values being in the metallic fraction.

That said, what happens to all of the fines after the process? It would indeed be interesting to take a sample of them, dry and mill them, and assay the powder. Likely they are tossing values by ignoring them.

Once the burnt ashes have been dried and sifted, I can melt the copper. based bullion directly by melting the oversize off the screen. That avoids the entire process shown in this video.

As an experiment I would do less crushing and screen it first to prevent the very fine gold pieces from falling through the screen. Then I would melt those parts and de-slag it. Then I would crush the balance the rest of the way to something on the order of -60 mesh and assay the powder. This would tell me if crushing completely puts more values in the slag than a slight crush (less time) followed by a re-sift.

I think Ayham would benefit tremendously from learning the fire assay process and using it to fine tune his process. We could easily open a how to fire assay thread to help with that. Although the topic has been covered here some years back.

I do enjoy these video's because they show us how others do the same or similar processes and allows us to comment and learn.

I can't understand your method, please translate into another accent to simplify it as you usually do.

 

[4metals]

I can't understand your method, please translate into another accent to simplify it as you usually do.

Basically, I do not see the point in the charcoal heating to cause the copper and values to melt together and coalesce in that funnel. Once the material is incinerated, the metals will naturally be in the oversize from which it is easily screened. Then you have a pile of powder to assay as well as the metal shots. If you could do fire assays, you would see there is metal you are not recovering.

Personally the entire funnel thing is unnecessary, just melt the oversize and pour shot if you want the nitric method. Or invest in a good salamander crucible and remove base metals in a smelting process to be left with just copper and precious metals. Then choose parting or copper cell.

It seems so odd to me that there is no market or means to export pure copper from your country. I guess your country has more going on to block that trade than we, spoiled Americans, take for granted here in the US.

 

[Ayham Hafez]

Basically, I do not see the point in the charcoal heating to cause the copper and values to melt together and coalesce in that funnel. Once the material is incinerated, the metals will naturally be in the oversize from which it is easily screened. Then you have a pile of powder to assay as well as the metal shots. If you could do fire assays, you would see there is metal you are not recovering.

Personally the entire funnel thing is unnecessary, just melt the oversize and pour shot if you want the nitric method. Or invest in a good salamander crucible and remove base metals in a smelting process to be left with just copper and precious metals. Then choose parting or copper cell.

It seems so odd to me that there is no market or means to export pure copper from your country. I guess your country has more going on to block that trade than we, spoiled Americans, take for granted here in the US.

Copper forbidden to export in my country in any shape (wires, ingots, cathods, chemical compounds etc .) this is because of an old rule created to stop theft of electricity copper wires!! (BTW, even Aluminum ingots and wires are forbidden, just Aluminum scrap is allowed, cause Electricity company also use Aluminum wires)

When I start to build my first titling furnace after read your thread "smelting" I noticed that there is a big issue related to the crucible, most of salamander crucibles in the market are fake ( labeled with Morgan label but has no certificate of origin) also when I compared price of A250 Morgan crucible from local market against e-commerce websites I believed that I will never get original crucible easily(A250 Morgan Salamander crucible is about 850$ in my local market)

Also after I read different threads I noticed that even with original graphite crucible we can't reach more than 20 smelts, so each smelt will cost me 40 $ which I think not feasible. This is why I always try to find a way to smelt without using graphite crucibles.

 

[Ayham Hafez]

Basically, I do not see the point in the charcoal heating to cause the copper and values to melt together and coalesce in that funnel. Once the material is incinerated, the metals will naturally be in the oversize from which it is easily screened. Then you have a pile of powder to assay as well as the metal shots. If you could do fire assays, you would see there is metal you are not recovering.

Personally the entire funnel thing is unnecessary, just melt the oversize and pour shot if you want the nitric method. Or invest in a good salamander crucible and remove base metals in a smelting process to be left with just copper and precious metals. Then choose parting or copper cell.

It seems so odd to me that there is no market or means to export pure copper from your country. I guess your country has more going on to block that trade than we, spoiled Americans, take for granted here in the US.

I think I missed something because of my English.

Do you mean that you incinerate the E-waste ash to crump metals together then you sift to get the crumpled metals? So you just smelt the crumpled metals and make a test on sifted powder to see if there still metals in it? Incase there still metals in the sifted powder, you will incinerate it again to try to crump metals again??