LED lights yield

[macfixer01]

Here’s one more example which is reliable and very detailed (but is also extremely slow moving). It’s a 2-part video that’s over 90 minutes total, by Omegageek64. He processed 990 grams of LED’s, and in part 2 he eventually recovers 4.1 grams of silver and 0.19 grams of gold.

So kjavanb123, once again you can see your gold result was pretty low. Given the same ratios your gold result would have been about 54 mg from 990 grams of starting material? Again I think it’s most likely because of the type of LEDs that you used? Since you didn’t post a photo of them though, we can only guess.

Honestly nobody is going to get rich off processing LEDs anyway. I’m only trying not to discourage others from trying, because they just assume they’re worthless. They are definitely something that would have to be done in large batches to make it worthwhile though.

 

[kjavanb123]

Most of us stays away from wet ashing.
Concentrated Sulfuric acid is bad but 300C hot Sulfuric is another dimension of bad.

Hi

I think wet ashing in a controlled environment at low temperature is not as nasty as boiling the acid like it is done in many videos.

Again I did this experiment to find out the yield for them since I couldn't find any info on the forum.

 

[kjavanb123]

What of other metals? The little 'cups' inside the LED and the tips of the posts often have PGMs, rhenium, or even rhodium.

But those are the OLD generations of LEDs. The newer ones are certainly much lower in precious metal content. The gold filaments are VISIBLY thinner when I compare my oldest ones to my newest ones.

Most of mine come from older stuff, 1970's to early 90's.

Hi

I didn't recover anything else, however there were some dark gray pieces that didn't dissolve in AR. I have to test them with sulfuric for rhodium.

 

[kjavanb123]

What of other metals? The little 'cups' inside the LED and the tips of the posts often have PGMs, rhenium, or even rhodium.

But those are the OLD generations of LEDs. The newer ones are certainly much lower in precious metal content. The gold filaments are VISIBLY thinner when I compare my oldest ones to my newest ones.

Most of mine come from older stuff, 1970's to early 90's.

Hi

I didn't recover anything else, however there were some dark gray pieces that didn't dissolve in AR. I have to test them with sulfuric for rhodium.

$1.80 worth (@ $2005/ozT) of Au yield from $4 worth of acid and 12 hours or your life, not counting waste treatment and disposal. Hardly worth the risk to your health. Hopefully they were free and already sorted/recovered by someone else.
I'd love to see a video of the cleanup process you used to handle the waste and lab ware cleanup.

Steve

Hi Steve

I didn't pay for the light only processed them to find out the yield.

I am having issue with uploading pictures recently so I don't think I can do a video.

I have a 10 percent lye solution which I add to acid waste till the pH is 7 then filter it through a woven bag to remove the neutralize liquid and dump the residue.

 

[kjavanb123]

I have to think it’s the type of LEDs you were processing, and/or you had some losses somewhere? For comparison below I’ll link a test video that 999 Dusan made about 4 years ago. He’s been refining a long time end I trust he knows what he’s doing. My short recap is:

He used a mix of different sizes and colors of old-style DIP package LED’s.
He started with only 179 grams (then removed any external leads still left with nitric acid, so even less weight?).
After incinerating and crushing, acid processing, etc, he recovered 1.2 grams of silver which you didn’t even mention in your post.
He also got a bead of gold which was less than .1 gram so his scale wouldn’t weigh it. Visually though it looks to me like it was probably more than your result of 28mg? But he started with only 1/3 the amount of material that you did?

For comparison he has another video he did a year later where he processed only the little square white surface-mount type LEDs. While he got a good amount of silver, they contained no gold at all.

Hi

I can't upload photos recently, but those lights were from a bill board. The gold bond wire was visible.

I used wet ashing in low heat then carefully rinsed it in a beaker with half full of water,, waited for 10 minutes then rinse from that beaker to waste bucket. Didn't see any gold bond wire at the bottom of this beaker so I assume I have all the bond wires within the LED lights.


There might be some Rhodium according to another member which I need to further test.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Hi

I didn't recover anything else, however there were some dark gray pieces that didn't dissolve in AR. I have to test them with sulfuric for rhodium.

Hi Steve

I didn't pay for the light only processed them to find out the yield.

I am having issue with uploading pictures recently so I don't think I can do a video.

I have a 10 percent lye solution which I add to acid waste till the pH is 7 then filter it through a woven bag to remove the neutralize liquid and dump the residue.

You have been here long enough to know better mate.
It is not sufficient.

Re read this :
https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/dealing-with-waste.10539/

 

[Alondro]

I have to think it’s the type of LEDs you were processing, and/or you had some losses somewhere? For comparison below I’ll link a test video that 999 Dusan made about 4 years ago. He’s been refining a long time end I trust he knows what he’s doing. My short recap is:

He used a mix of different sizes and colors of old-style DIP package LED’s.
He started with only 179 grams (then removed any external leads still left with nitric acid, so even less weight?).
After incinerating and crushing, acid processing, etc, he recovered 1.2 grams of silver which you didn’t even mention in your post.
He also got a bead of gold which was less than .1 gram so his scale wouldn’t weigh it. Visually though it looks to me like it was probably more than your result of 28mg? But he started with only 1/3 the amount of material that you did?

For comparison he has another video he did a year later where he processed only the little square white surface-mount type LEDs. While he got a good amount of silver, they contained no gold at all.

I have dissolved a few of those tiny white LEDs, some of them DO have a gold bond wire, and a couple with an odd structure even had a tiny flat foil of gold somewhere inside, which floated out after dissolving the rest of the metal. Others have no gold. Again, it's highly variable, depending upon the age of the component, the manufacturer, the grade of the boards, etc.

This is why I test everything I have a fairly high number of. You can never be 100% certain of some parts. Unless it's consumer electronics newer than 2004. THEN you can be fairly certain they have very little!

 

[Alondro]

I have to think it’s the type of LEDs you were processing, and/or you had some losses somewhere? For comparison below I’ll link a test video that 999 Dusan made about 4 years ago. He’s been refining a long time end I trust he knows what he’s doing. My short recap is:

He used a mix of different sizes and colors of old-style DIP package LED’s.
He started with only 179 grams (then removed any external leads still left with nitric acid, so even less weight?).
After incinerating and crushing, acid processing, etc, he recovered 1.2 grams of silver which you didn’t even mention in your post.
He also got a bead of gold which was less than .1 gram so his scale wouldn’t weigh it. Visually though it looks to me like it was probably more than your result of 28mg? But he started with only 1/3 the amount of material that you did?

For comparison he has another video he did a year later where he processed only the little square white surface-mount type LEDs. While he got a good amount of silver, they contained no gold at all.

I am going to keep the leads of some of my LEDs when I process them. I noticed that a good portion of the old LEDs have legs that tarnish is a very 'silvery' manner, and the metal plating that isn't tarnished on them is a very pale silvery color. It's quite different from the 'steely' appearance of newer LED legs.

Always look at parts closely! Metal usage has changed many times over the years.

 

[kjavanb123]

Update

I processed 197.2g of LED lights this time they were clear.

I was able to recover 0.0t6g of gold and no Rhodium.

So I learned the LEDs with lower amount of gold has more Rhodium and the ones with more gold tend to have no Rhodium.

Best regards
KJ

 

[Marcel]

Rhodium? How did you identify that?

The production of LEDs (light-emitting diodes) typically involves the use of semiconductor materials such as gallium nitride (GaN), indium gallium nitride (InGaN), and aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN). The specific combination of these materials determines the color of the produced light, such as blue or green.

In addition to the semiconductor materials, dopants such as silicon, germanium, or zinc are also used to modify the electrical properties of the semiconductor materials and improve the performance and efficiency of the LEDs. Furthermore, metals such as gold, silver, and copper are used for the contacting of the LED.
(From a book on materials in electronics)

 

[Marcel]

@Alandro:

1. LEDs from 1970 are highly unlikely. Commercially available LEDs for the general public only became available in the 1980s, and not all colors were available at that time. White and blue LEDs were not available until the 1990s, although organizations like NASA and General Electric were able to obtain them a few years earlier.
2. All of the silver in the LEDs is plated onto the legs. To extract the silver, you can simply cut off the legs of the LEDs. Internally, there may be a single golden bond wire, but it is suggested to separate the legs and main body of the LED to ensure that you get all of the silver.
3. The previous discussion has focused on Through-Hole-Technology (THT) LEDs, which have legs. Surface Mounted Device (SMD) LEDs, on the other hand, do not have legs but rather small pads that connect the LED to the printed circuit board (PCB). The exact composition of the metal on these pads is not known, but they are thought to consist of a tin-silver-lead-copper solder mix with a silver content of around 5%, compared to around 90% for tin. As a result, there is not much silver to harvest from SMD LEDs. However, they do contain a tiny pure gold bond wire that can be observed with ordinary magnifying glasses. We could do some calculations to roughly estimate how much Gold can be expected from a batch of SMD LEDs.

 

[kjavanb123]

Rhodium? How did you identify that?

The production of LEDs (light-emitting diodes) typically involves the use of semiconductor materials such as gallium nitride (GaN), indium gallium nitride (InGaN), and aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN). The specific combination of these materials determines the color of the produced light, such as blue or green.

In addition to the semiconductor materials, dopants such as silicon, germanium, or zinc are also used to modify the electrical properties of the semiconductor materials and improve the performance and efficiency of the LEDs. Furthermore, metals such as gold, silver, and copper are used for the contacting of the LED.
(From a book on materials in electronics)

Hi

A member posted about it here. I dissolved the gold wires in AR but there was 0.1 or 0.2g of gray residue not soluble in AR.

 

[naandesh]

Getting gold from LED lights sounds like a big job! I've also tried recycling parts from electronics, and I know it's not easy to get much gold from small things like LEDs. It's fantastic that you got 28mg from all those LEDs!

I learned a lot from a website called LED LIGHTING - world's #1 led lighting review site. They have articles about what's inside LEDs and why there's not much gold. This site helped me understand more about LEDs and how to recycle them. If you want to get more into this, it's an excellent place to start.

 

[Alondro]

Hi

A member posted about it here. I dissolved the gold wires in AR but there was 0.1 or 0.2g of gray residue not soluble in AR.

Could be rhenium. That's found plating the 'cups' in some old LEDs.

 

[Alondro]

Getting gold from LED lights sounds like a big job! I've also tried recycling parts from electronics, and I know it's not easy to get much gold from small things like LEDs. It's fantastic that you got 28mg from all those LEDs!

I learned a lot from a website called LED LIGHTING - world's #1 led lighting review site. They have articles about what's inside LEDs and why there's not much gold. This site helped me understand more about LEDs and how to recycle them. If you want to get more into this, it's an excellent place to start.

It's not any harder than getting gold out of PROMs. Just pyrolize then incinerate the plastic, and your left with the leads and bond wires in the ashes. There's actually LESS junk metal in the LEDs, and no big heat sinks or silicon die to deal with either.

 

[BShan]

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https://i.redd.it/znteg1r2ytg01.jpg

I remember when LEDs went high power, before they all started going flip chip. For reference, generally these are ~1mmx1mm, but the lensed package does make it, and the bonding wires, appear larger. But, these devices are relatively high power, 10W consumption is fairly normal, with 3A of current passing through the package. These examples are after high power LEDs became more widespread, but before the mass prevalence of flip-chip high power LEDs.

Edit: I forgot the main reason I brought this up: those beautiful bond wires! So, 5mm LEDs are often driven at 0.02-0.03 amps, handled by a single bonding wire. These devices handle closer to 4A, with current handled by 2 parallel bonding wires. And some power LEDs have many many bondwires!

 

[offtrailhiker]

$1.80 worth (@ $2005/ozT) of Au yield from $4 worth of acid and 12 hours or your life, not counting waste treatment and disposal. Hardly worth the risk to your health. Hopefully they were free and already sorted/recovered by someone else.
I'd love to see a video of the cleanup process you used to handle the waste and lab ware cleanup.

Steve

OP made a contribution. So now we know not to try it.

 

[offtrailhiker]

I think I've seen a couple of his videos, and if my memory serves me right it is the typical south Asian style vidoeo.
Like Trinity and so on, I expect inflated yields and removal of all issues that arose during production.
I might be wrong though, first impressions can be tricky that way.

And don't forget the risky processes he uses. Entertaining though in a macabre sort of way.

 

[offtrailhiker]

Here’s one more example which is reliable and very detailed (but is also extremely slow moving). It’s a 2-part video that’s over 90 minutes total, by Omegageek64. He processed 990 grams of LED’s, and in part 2 he eventually recovers 4.1 grams of silver and 0.19 grams of gold.

So kjavanb123, once again you can see your gold result was pretty low. Given the same ratios your gold result would have been about 54 mg from 990 grams of starting material? Again I think it’s most likely because of the type of LEDs that you used? Since you didn’t post a photo of them though, we can only guess.

Honestly nobody is going to get rich off processing LEDs anyway. I’m only trying not to discourage others from trying, because they just assume they’re worthless. They are definitely something that would have to be done in large batches to make it worthwhile though.

Oh man! omegageek64! What a way to not refine! I watched him stick his face in PbO fumes! I saw one of his videos where he's having some health problems. Imagine that.

 

[PlainsScrapper]

I've been collecting LED's from various electronic circuit boards, and have found that there are silvery looking LED's and others that look golden. The best way to determine the bonding wire used (especially on super small chips) is a simple digital microscope with display you can easily find on Amazon. Any silvery or copper wires I toss.
Looking through the scope I soaked the COB LED in some simple label remover solvent and determined the bond wires used are copper. Christmas light LED's and backlight LEDs are copper as well.