IC Gold - First Successful Try

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mbn

Member
Joined
Jan 16, 2015
Messages
23
Location
Tabriz, Iran
Hi you there, dear people of Gold Refining Forum,
Thanks to Patnor101 and other kind members who shared their precious information, I tried to recover and refine gold from nearly 1.3 kilogram of IC chips. It was from 40 grams of n/s bridges (only black top), 850 grams of ram chips and the rest, other black IC chips from motherboard/cards (no eproms or thick eprom-likes).

After hours of proper incinerating and then, using mortar-and-pestle to dust the white chips and magnet to separate the pins, I washed the dust carefully (with drops of liquid soap) and let it dry. I then crushed the sands and washed it again, but my pan was not black or blue so I couldn't see any gold wires there; I transferred the dust/sand to my beaker and when washing the product one more time, I saw the beauty just beneath the beaker on the bottom.

I soaked the fine sands in 50/50 diluted Nitric acid (250ml D-Water and 250ml Nitric), which created a mess with all the brown fumes and a little leakage, but anyway, that was an educational experiment to know next time I'll add the acid a little at a time in several pours.

After about an hour and a half, when the copper pins dissolved (most of them), I soaked the concentrate on Aqua Regia and dissolved everything (it was yellowish brown) - I've begun evaporating the excess of nitric and then, participated the brownish black mud with SMB. The recovered gold mud goes to second AR with a very careful additions of nitric, drop by drop - I also used three drops of Sulfuric to the AR. After filtration and diluting the AR four times with D-water, I participated the gold with SMB and then, washed the gold mud first with boiling distilled-water (3x), and again with near-boiling HCL (3x) and then, final three washes with boiling distilled-water.
Here are the photographs:
 

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Mohsen THAT is a good start!

Congratulations. You've got a way to go but hey you got a result!

Jon
 
Congratulation, when you have melted your first button and holds it in your hand you will be really hooked. 8)

A bit of advice, don't put the beaker directly onto the hot plate. Some sand between the beaker and the plate will lessen the risk of thermal shock and breaking the beaker. You should also use some kind of catch vessel if a beaker breaks. I use to put my hot plate inside a plastic box so if a beaker breaks the gold chloride could easily be recovered.
Some people use a pyroceram vessel on the hot plate, it works both as a thermal buffer and a catch vessel if something breaks.

Now we just wait for the picture of your final button, unless you just save the powder until you got more to melt.

Göran
 
Göran - Thanks a bunch for the advice. From now on, I'll do as you said.
I will melt this one, but not now 'cause I have to buy a dish and a better torch.
 
I would recommend cleaning it up before you melt it. It's definitely got some impurities in it that would be better removed now before making a button.

Alternatively as Goran suggested, put it to one side until you've got some more powder and re-refine and clean it all up at once.

Again though, a great start I hope you're feeling good.
 
Thank you Jon.
It sure looks way better than the picture (I don't know why, maybe the white-balance issue), but I also expect it to be better for a two-times refined gold.
Do you mean another AR by "cleaning", or another way (or method) of washing?
-
Thanks again for the advice and encouragement.
 
Good work. Try to reduce concentrate to the absolute minimum you can, repeated washing and grinding of 1 kilogram of IC will leave you with like 2 spoons of material.
 
Patnor1011 - You're right. I've done the wash & grind process almost 4 times (last one was with a spoon in the beaker), but I was eager to run the whole process and see the result - learnt so much for the next time.
Thank you.
 
1.76 Gram.
0.70g was the empty paper, and all is 2.46.
-
I know there is some loss (in compare to a perfect process), but I hope not much.
 

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Hi you there again, dear people of forum

I was so eager, like a baby i would say, to see the golden yellow - so, I tried to melt the powder. As I know it for sure now, my torch was not good enough to drop the gold and make a button. It is my first one, so, I love it even if it's ugly in shape!
It has a weight of 1.74 grams.
 

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mbn said:
Hi you there again, dear people of forum

I was so eager, like a baby i would say, to see the golden yellow - so, I tried to melt the powder. As I know it for sure now, my torch was not good enough to drop the gold and make a button. It is my first one, so, I love it even if it's ugly in shape!
It has a weight of 1.74 grams.

Looks like you just need to heat it for a little longer time. Use some sheet rock under your melting dish so some of the heat doesn't get transfered from the dish.
 
Now you're hooked!

Did you season the melting dish with borax?

Göran
 
Barren Realms 007
You're right. Thanks for the advice. I'll try to do better next time.

Yes Göran,
I preheated the dish and seasoned it with borax, but the heat was not right. The powder melted to become a metal, but not molten enough to produce a whole drop and be a button.
Thanks for your attention and the encouragement.
 
The picture of the bottom of your gold with the heads up nickel looks like Mexico! 8)

Nice work on the gold!!
 
glorycloud said:
The picture of the bottom of your gold with the heads up nickel looks like Mexico! 8)
... the bottom one, the top one instead looks like Italy without islands. So, Mexico and Italy are similar :p
 
Hi Mohsen

Effectively although you melted the gold in part you didn't melt it completely in the crucible (assuming you had a touch of borax in there of course)

It's also your first melt so it's really easy to feel nervous about it - I know for a fact that I did! You need to melt it and roll it around the crucible to collect all the molten gold so it "snaps" into a perfect circle. At that point you know it's fully melted.

Once you have seen that "snap" once you will never forget it.

Don't be scared of it. If you're not using a hydrogen/oxygen torch then your chances of evaporating the gold are pretty slim.
 
spaceships said:
You need to melt it and roll it around the crucible to collect all the molten gold so it "snaps" into a perfect circle. At that point you know it's fully melted.

Once you have seen that "snap" once you will never forget it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq5ydeWWr4A

Sorry :)
 
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