MLCC Palladium

Hello everyone!

I received 3 kg of capacitors to recover the palladium. I tried a 100 g sample and didn't succeed in the recovering.

My question how do you differentiate between two brown smd capacitors, the ones that contain palladium and those who don't?

Here's a photo of the lot:


I know that there's a lost inductor here and there (marked in red), but the majority is small brown smd capacitors.

From a sample of this picture, the stannous chloride test failed and DMG test failed.

The capacitors were boiled with 5 times its weigh in volume of 38% HCl, they disintegrate leaving only the ceramic foils, which in the aqua regia digestion they all became a white powder.

Thanks!

Have you tested the HCl you did the original boil in?

Hi,

If the shipping costs to UAE was not a concern I could toll refine them for you using my smelting furnace. It would have recovered all the PMs there is in them.

Thanks
Kj

color has nothing to do with it.

I have samples of MLCCs that range from $0.00-$500.00Lb. They all look the same.
One great way to test is with a magnet. the ones that stick are for eBay the rest will have a return. Not saying the return is going to be great but you will get something.

Sort them first.

Eric

I have some experience in buying MLCCs I have either sold or had refined over 1500Lbs of them in 2015.

Ah, I had noticed that some were magnetic--thanks for the tip! I haven't refined any yet, and wasn't sure if the magnetism was because of nickel on the sides or not, so they're currently mixed (magnetic & non-magnetic).

I'm glad to see the colors mean nothing, too. I've seen SMD caps (marked Cnnn or C_nnn) in mostly brown and tan, but some very light tans that look close to the greys, and greys as well. Depending on my mood, I'll grab anything with a C (if marked), or just shades of brown/tan.

The magnet will also pull out the ones that look like MLCCs but are really inductors - they have no value as well.

Thanks everyone!!

I tested them with a magnet and 99,7% of them are attracted!

I separated them as magnetic things (left tray), things that weren't magnetic (center tray) and non-magnetic capacitors (petri dish).



From the 3 kg I got around 20 g of non-magnetic capacitors. I took a 10 g sample, and did the normal procedure, boil in HCl, then aqua regia. On the filtered solution I add DMG, and got the fluffy precipitate:



I calcine the DMG-Pd and melted the residue, from this I got 0,15 g, I did lost a bit of Pd while calcining (yellow fumes) but this was mainly a test to see the palladium.



I was very happy to see that with the right capacitors and with the loss of some at the calcination, I got at least 1,5%!

Thanks Again everyone!

Just forgot:

Already talked to the person, and he was happy to have finally discovered what to look for in the capacitors, and sad that almost nothing has Pd.

I bet that these are the "ebay" capacitors and this 20 g I separated passed their separation...

There should still be silver in them.

The palladium MLCC I processed were magnetic, I think the non palladium ones just have a stronger magnetic attraction. Be sure you are using a weak magnet or you are throwing good ones away.

Rocky888 said:

The palladium MLCC I processed were magnetic, I think the non palladium ones just have a stronger magnetic attraction. Be sure you are using a weak magnet or you are throwing good ones away.

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I agree with this comment. Because there is some magnetism doesn't automatically rule out the fact that they may be noble metal MLC.

Jon

If you use neodymium magnet that one will pull out like all of them because of nickel in them. Magnet "test" is not bulletproof indicator of Pd presence. Also note what I said about silver. Silver will be likely present in most of them so if you do have volume you certainly do have value. I will not speculate on effectiveness in case they were purchased, several members presented yields around 10-17% of silver in mixed lots if I remember correctly so that mean you may have at least 3oz of silver in 1 kilogram of them.

patnor1011 said:

There should still be silver in them.

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The silver precipitated as AgCl after boiling the the solution and driving off the excess HCl. I collect it in the filter paper, to be processed in the future

Thanks everyone for contributing!

When I tried a random 100g of the lot, I got nothing with DMG, those 0,15g made a very voluminous precipitate, to me there's nothing (Pd) in these "random" capacitors.

20 g from 3 kg is too low? Would a weak magnet be advisable then or maybe these capacitor just came from "bad" boards?

Do the board type influence in the Pd content? The country of origin is correlated too?

Thanks

The reason a weak magnet may work is because the palladium MLCC’s has nickel on the two outer metal electrodes only while the nickel MLCC’s also have nickel on the outer electrodes plus inside the ceramic substrate. The more layers the more nickel in the capacitor. In modern electronics the “tall” MLCC’s will almost always be nickel. The ones most likely to be palladium will be the flat ones without many layers. Here is an interesting link on the evolution of nickel in MLCC’s. http://www.ttiinc.com/object/me-zogbi-20130116.html . As you can see palladium use in MLCC’s started to drop after the year 2000.

I read all discussion on this topic of your,s. I have 500g mlcc from boards and only 10g mlcc are non magnetic that means i have only 10g mlcc having pd in it, magnetized mlcc are useless.

raza,! magnatic and non magnatics are just a way to estimate the values. non magnatic mllccs contain silver also.

Raza shahid said:

I read all discussion on this topic of your,s. I have 500g mlcc from boards and only 10g mlcc are non magnetic that means i have only 10g mlcc having pd in it, magnetized mlcc are useless.

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Weakly magnetic ones are not always "useless" and still may contain PGMs.

Edit:

It's more down to the application of the board that the components came from. If it's a cheap board for a low end item then why would a manufacturer waste valuable materials. On the other hand if the board cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars then that's where you are most likely to find noble metal MLCC.