Processing smart cards, sim cards

This is my recent project I work on.
Smart cards were new, not used.
Picture show only small part of what I work on I was too quick and did not took picture when I started but I started with 10,000 pieces.

They are just cut out of cards, about 20% of batch I work on are like this(previous post picture), 80% are with back gray plastic removed so only plated area from one side and small chip with bonding wires on other side (picture).

edited* - pictured cards are little bit different than batch I work for, I used picture only to show both sides of card - mainly side with chip and bonding wires.
It is visible on next picture with cards after Nitric leach.

They were put in AP, foils were loose in 2 days. I separated and washed foils and stripped cards.

Stripped cards still do have some copper on side where foils were and chip with bonding wires on other side. I gave them wash in Nitric to remove as much of copper as possible.

Cards after Nitric wash. Nitric reacted with glue used on cards.

Incinerated cards.

After incineration I just crushed incinerated cards as much as possible and used my favorite method - I panned incinerated material to remove ash. This need to be done carefully as all contact points where bonding wires were attached on card - small circles are just foils and can be easily washed away. I just removed small bit of ash and all the rest with wires went to AR.
First leach was green, dirty as all those foils from under glue could not be reached by acid prior incineration.
Now I am filtering first drop, then I will proceed with washing powder and second refining in AR.
I will update this post with more info later.

The glue caused me problems also. I used sodium hydroxide first and it took care of the glue and freed up any wires or chips. I tried incineration, but i went the sodium route because it was easy to wash the solution from the chips once the glue and backs were gone.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=15397

Yeah, I remember that thread. I was not really comfortable with hot hydroxide so I incinerated them. You can see that center piece with IC and bonding wires quickly got out of the rest of card. I used strainer so all fell through only fiber like piece to which it was attached stayed in. Ash was crushed and washed with water - then leached in AR.
That 10,000 cards weighted 600g but as I said about 20% of them were cut out of cards with plastic attached on back and 80% just plated part peeled off whole cards. So I guess weight cant be used as data to compare yields but number - 10,000 pieces.

Incinerated and sieved cards, bonding wires visible also some flakes from round contacts.

Now what I got from them - 3.30 g

I really enjoy learning new ways to do gold recovery. 8)

Especially when someone else is doing the actual work :shock:

Good work Patnor

just curious patnor, did you pay for the sim cards or were they free?? 600 grams of cards and you got 3.3 grams of gold, roughly what 160 bucks of gold. was it worth it? or was this for science purpouses? tim

This was done for somebody as test run, he got offer to buy 100.000 pieces. As far as I know he is not going to buy them as price was higher than what I got out of them. I got about 110 euro in gold in today price.

Sorry to hear the results were so low, i would thought that the plating would be a bit thicker than that considering how much you scratch that surface. My new bankcard has a silvery surface instead of gold, anyone know what it consist of is it silver?

Mikael

hi patnor101,

were these all cut by hand one at a time ?

i have about 5,000 or 6,000 smart cards, may sell them because of the amount of work to remove contacts

thanks

Yes, they appeared to be cut by hand and peeled off card. Insane amount of work considering yield.

hmmm....

guess i will fleabay them, to much work pealing

thank you

Hi All...
Just passing by to give some info considering this new novel method...

Article
Recovery of Precious Metals by Selective Adsorption on Dimethylamine-Modified Persimmon Peel

Ying Xiong, Chaitanya Raj Adhikari, Hidetaka Kawakita, Keisuke Ohto, Hiroyuki Harada, Katsutoshi Inoue
College of Chemistry, Liaoning University, Shenyang, China
04/2012; 1(3):339-345. DOI:10.1007/s12649-010-9029-3

ABSTRACT
Dimethylamine (DMA) functional group was grafted to obtain modified persimmon peel gel (DMA-PP) with the focus of development of selective recovery of gold as well as other precious metals like palladium and platinum. The adsorption behavior of the DMA-PP gel for various metal ions at varying hydrochloric acid concentrations has been studied. It was found that the DMA-PP exhibits high affinity for Au(III) as well as for Pt(IV) and Pd(II) and no affinity for base metals such as Cu(II), Fe(III), Ni(II), and Zn(II) under the operating conditions. The valuated apparent activation energy value suggests that adsorption of Au(III) on the DMA-PP gel is a chemical process. Another important result is that the size of the gel has an important effect on kinetics of the adsorption and reduction of Au(III). The application of this gel which has very high adsorption capacity and selectivity avoids the use of any additional reducing agents for the recovery of Au(III) in elemental form. In addition, its excellent adsorption characteristics for the precious metals were confirmed under dynamic conditions of column operation.

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/226550211_Recovery_of_Precious_Metals_by_Selective_Adsorption_on_Dimethylamine-Modified_Persimmon_Peel

Looks like yet another wheel being re-invented.

rickbb said:

Looks like yet another wheel being re-invented.

Click to expand...

I wonder if it's the same quality as the rest of that chinese feces they flood the world with. :shock: