Smelting 41 kgs of mlccs followed by large scale cupellation

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gaurav_347

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 17, 2013
Messages
169
All,

There are 3 parts to the video . The person has only uploaded 2 parts . These are not my videos . I am only uploading them for the members to see how scraps are being processed on a large scale in countries like India and Pakistan mainly by the unauthorized sector.

Regards,
Gaurav
PART 1
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1UoIU6Ef-o[/youtube]

PART 2

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9jFjXVo6Tk[/youtube]
 
I'm not sure what I was supposed to get out of that, granted I only watched the first video so far... But, I think if the cool guy with the shades is selling something, I would be inclined to buy it. 8)
 
Topher_osAUrus said:
I'm not sure what I was supposed to get out of that, granted I only watched the first video so far... But, I think if the cool guy with the shades is selling something, I would be inclined to buy it. 8)
If he keeps on using his hands without gloves on,,,,he won't live long enough to sell anything. All I seen was what not to do based on safety. I would guess they know about PGM poisoning and then again, I don't think they really care. It's all about the money, I guess. :shock:

Ken
 
I am curious to see how much of gold did he got out of that amount of salvaged capacitors and resistors. It looks that they got less silver than expected, 3.6 kilogram AgPd ingot is somehow less than I would expect from 41 kilograms of feedstock. But then there was some sloppy work with broken crucible also there must be quite a bit of metal trapped in slag it was kinda visible mainly on fourth pour and looks like some values were lost also when they were skimming PbO. Just my observation.
 
jeneje said:
If he keeps on using his hands without gloves on,,,,he won't live long enough to sell anything. All I seen was what not to do based on safety. I would guess they know about PGM poisoning and then again, I don't think they really care. It's all about the money, I guess. :shock:

Ken
....why do you think there was only 2 of 3 videos released... :evil: :twisted:

I found it foolishly funny, that he mixed the "clean" with the dirty ones in the beginning... And some weren't even sorted through great anyways. It looked like he was mixing tungston and tantalum pieces with other junk... ...now, I can't even pretend like I know what kind of outcome that would bring but, I would think it would've been in his best interest to run the clean stuff then the dirty separately. ...I am surprised some of that stuff didn't get edited out though for the sake of youtube-cool-guy prosperity.
 
TBH I quite enjoyed watching the second video. There was a lot of interesting stuff to see in there. I already knew that they wouldn't be running to "standard" H and S regs so I discounted that concern at outset.
 
I don't think it is foolish to mix two batches together if it is processed in the same way. Running two smaller batches could probably create more loss than one large.

The guy filming is probably the one that gets the money in the end. The guy in the movie, mixing chemicals with bare hands, is probably just a worker and paid by the hour.
At the end of part two he is using rubber boots and gloves so that is probably the owner filming himself working with the valuable stuff.

It looks like he is making a new video every week so part three is probably due in a couple of days.

Göran
 
Topher_osAUrus said:
jeneje said:
If he keeps on using his hands without gloves on,,,,he won't live long enough to sell anything. All I seen was what not to do based on safety. I would guess they know about PGM poisoning and then again, I don't think they really care. It's all about the money, I guess. :shock:

Ken
....why do you think there was only 2 of 3 videos released... :evil: :twisted:

I found it foolishly funny, that he mixed the "clean" with the dirty ones in the beginning... And some weren't even sorted through great anyways. It looked like he was mixing tungston and tantalum pieces with other junk... ...now, I can't even pretend like I know what kind of outcome that would bring but, I would think it would've been in his best interest to run the clean stuff then the dirty separately. ...I am surprised some of that stuff didn't get edited out though for the sake of youtube-cool-guy prosperity.

You may be mistaken my friend. :mrgreen:
First of all while you are correct that few capacitors were indeed orange tantalum ones I would say that there was so little of them that there was no point to pick them up. However, what you refer as dirty ones are those which actually brought in the gold. There is no gold on unused ones, gold comes from gold plated pads on pcb where they were soldered. From what I have seen he had all the good stuff there with exception of very few ta capacitors I mentioned. What you call other junk are in fact resistors which do have very good silver yield in them.
 
Thats good to know Pat, and I appreciate the correction! 8)

I saw the big red square one's and the others you mentioned, I was under the impression they were majority base metals.
Thank you much

The second video was much better than the first, I must admit.

But, when the crucible sprung a leak, I had to rewind a bit just to see how close the guy was to losing a foot!

I am quite intrigued after the second video, and hope he uploads the last part of his trilogy soon.
 
All,

Here are some facts regarding this process. Firstly the cupel that was used will be broken down,grinded in the ball mill and smelted again along with the next batch of ic ashes or mlccs. The top oxide layer that is being skimmed will also be smelted again . This is done to save costs to use litharge again. In the next batch less than half the amount of lead/lead oxide is used.. This is also done because some of the values get absorbed by the handmade cupel. It's a continuous process. This way they recover 99 % of the values.

Regards,
Gaurav
 
At 13:50 mark you can see the worker is breaking some kind of rock with a hammer . This is the cupel that the youtuber is using from his previous batch.
 
Video 3 is live now.
8) 8) 8) 8)
He doesnt boil his dmg/water solution..or filter, he just dumps it all in and waits a day. ( Why do people opt against cementing on copper so much??) He burns all his dmg-pd filters inside (bad idea)
Once he melts the pd, he adds ammonia chloride pinches to it.. I dont see any noticeable crabbing on the pd button, does that mean the purity is considerably off from the 99% he poses?

...then his silver chloride, he just throws into a furnace.. Doesnt show him mixing anything with it at all, but he recovers almost 420g out of 750... So I am thinking he lost quite a bit.

Anyways...once he gets to the gold, its still pretty dirty. The 10.4g button doesnt have a visible pipe even though he dissolved it in AR..

I would post the link, but I am stupid and cant figure how to copy the hyperlink from my youtube app... ..stupid smartphone..
 
Whoop! There it is.

Thanks, I was following the advice of Dave to get it posted ...then I checked the mail and had a tripleA membership letter that had a bunch of stats and junk to get me to become a member...I started crunching the numbers of their "stats" and it's ridiculously far fetched.. But thats neither here nor there, nor related to gold. :roll:

Thank you for posting it up for everyone else.

I still wonder if he mixed the AgCl with anything before furnace reduction. I saw them sprinkle a pinch of something on it, but it didn't say anything at that time.
 
Ken, you can teach them, you cant hate them. You simply cant apply your standards to their situation as it is completely different. If no other then they go through exactly the same evolution process we went few years ago. We may be ahead, but you can be sure that they will also get there. It all take time, perhaps some help but hate or degradation does not help a bit.
There is not a long time when "we" or people in the west were sniffing chemicals or even tasting them, health and safety is also fairly new addition. I bet that there is still quite large amount of people in the west who do use mercury for gold reclamation. Mining with cyanide leaching on huge scale with spillage of millions of liters of mining waste in the ground or rivers? "Western" petroleum companies with less than adequate standards when operating somewhere in third world countries? We can go on and on but believe me, we are no better than they are.
That he used gloves and poor workers in foundry did not? Exactly the same is happening over here and you will see it if you open your eyes, it just look a little bit different.
 
patnor1011 said:
Ken, you can teach them, you cant hate them. You simply cant apply your standards to their situation as it is completely different. If no other then they go through exactly the same evolution process we went few years ago. We may be ahead, but you can be sure that they will also get there. It all take time, perhaps some help but hate or degradation does not help a bit.
There is not a long time when "we" or people in the west were sniffing chemicals or even tasting them, health and safety is also fairly new addition. I bet that there is still quite large amount of people in the west who do use mercury for gold reclamation. Mining with cyanide leaching on huge scale with spillage of millions of liters of mining waste in the ground or rivers? "Western" petroleum companies with less than adequate standards when operating somewhere in third world countries? We can go on and on but believe me, we are no better than they are.
That he used gloves and poor workers in foundry did not? Exactly the same is happening over here and you will see it if you open your eyes, it just look a little bit different.
Pat, you are right. I did not mean for my post be a hated post. What I was trying to do here is, if we are going to discuss these video's let talk about what needs to be addressed from a professional refining aspect. NO, i do not think that the guy making these video's should have PPE and the men he is using to perform the work does not. I think they need it too. Putting them in harm's way is wrong in any Country IMHO.

I do understand what you are saying about the evolution of the Countries, and YES we are lucky that we have laws to protect us in the West. Again sorry if, I let my personal feeling come out in this thread, however, I think we should focus on the right and wrong ways of doing our hobby.

Ken

Ken
 
That is kind of what I was trying to say. It is essentially our fault anyway. It is us who ship our electronic waste there instead of having it sorted out here. We do this exactly because we know that they do it cheaper. And they do it cheaper exactly because they do not use proper caution. It is a full circle and we are the ones who are responsible for it as in order to keep it cheap we need them to do it that way over there.
That we is exactly you and me. While all decision making is made on corporate level it is you and me who enable corporations to do this and pretty much get away with it. Another full circle there.
This is the way it always was and it seems it will stay like that for quite some time. I am not leftist or anarchist or whatever label someone may want to throw at me, I just see things as they are.

But back to the topic after re-watching first part I can say that Topher was quite right and there is quite a lot of garbage in there and while it may account for some of less than expected yield. Another loss can be that it was quite sloppy job all the way and in pretty much every step.
I would call it not so good recovery and from what he did I would say he did recovery but not refining. Refining is way different from what he did.
 
Most of the unfortunate exchange that caused the members to be banned has been removed.

Members please note the bickering on this thread has resulted in both Jon, AKA Anachronism, and Ken, AKA Jeneje receiving a 2 week temporary ban from the forum. This behavior will not be tolerated, either baiting another member or coming back in a demeaning manner are both against the forum rules and will result in a temporary 2 week ban. In addition, any individual having received 3 bans is done.

We recognize there are what we in the US consider safety issues here and we rely on the common sense of our members to see beyond the safety issues and enter into a discussion of the actual processing. A thorough discussion of the process, the actual chemistry behind what is happening to get the desired results may prove interesting if we all focus on the methods and ask questions and discuss this in a civilized manner.

A PM by the OP requested this thread to be unlocked and after removing the offensive posts the moderators decided to do just that. So let the questioning begin.
 
Thank you 4metals for unlocking this topic for further discussions. This is relatively a new process for most of the members here. Kevin uses similar processes but his process is done in one go. Here are two steps first smelting and then cupellation and investment on litharge is only a one time thing. This method is applicable for both ic ashes and mlccs. You can always scale down the process accordingly. Owltech has come good videos on his channel on youtube to make cupels out of portland cement. This is one of the best forms of recovery if you do it correctly and in a manner where you or the environment is not affected. I am currently in the process for manufacturing a large furnace where I can smelt 15-20kgs of ic ashes in one go . It will be fired by coal. If anybody has any confusion related to this process I am here to help.

Regards,
Gaurav
 
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