After finally being able to source Nitric acid at a somewhat reasonable price I have decided to return to this little hobby in a more laid back fashion. One of the areas I'd like to get into would be the Palladium and Silver recovery from mlcc.
I know that for mlcc's you want to find the older ones because you have a greater chance of having the caps with Palladium and Silver instead of Nickle and other base metals.
I had stumbled across this video showing a cross section of a mlcc showing the layers that the Palladium is distributed in (link below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2k286UTZWU
It appears in that video that the Palladium metal is distributed as very thin layers on top of the ceramic kind of like the icing separating the layers of a cake. Through a little more research I found that density wise the Palladium is the metal with the highest density being 12.02 followed by Silver with 10.5. The remaining metals that I have research that can be/ are in these little guys are Copper 8.96, Nickle 8.9, Tin 7.3, & Possibly Lead 11.35 as well as other traces of other base metals. Ceramic I have found can be between 2-6 (wikipedia)
With that out of the way I was thinking of ways outside of what is well documented here on how to go at this problem the ways which are most documented are the melt first or treat with chemicals and then precipitate the Pd and Silver.
I hadn't seen any mention of mechanical methods and because of the density difference for the Palladium I was wondering about how well something like a shaker table or even miller table might work?
My idea would be to have the monolithic capacitors turned to fine powder via a ball mill and then slowly add them wet to either shaker table or miller table, then collect the concentrates.
I know this method wouldn't be the end all be all of recovery for 100% recovery but I'm wondering if it would at least be useful in helping to remove most of the unwanted base metals?(most importantly Tin) and the ceramic?
I don't currently have either of these tools available to me but thought I would start a discussion on the topic. What are your thoughts on the idea? or anything you might change/add?
I know that for mlcc's you want to find the older ones because you have a greater chance of having the caps with Palladium and Silver instead of Nickle and other base metals.
I had stumbled across this video showing a cross section of a mlcc showing the layers that the Palladium is distributed in (link below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2k286UTZWU
It appears in that video that the Palladium metal is distributed as very thin layers on top of the ceramic kind of like the icing separating the layers of a cake. Through a little more research I found that density wise the Palladium is the metal with the highest density being 12.02 followed by Silver with 10.5. The remaining metals that I have research that can be/ are in these little guys are Copper 8.96, Nickle 8.9, Tin 7.3, & Possibly Lead 11.35 as well as other traces of other base metals. Ceramic I have found can be between 2-6 (wikipedia)
With that out of the way I was thinking of ways outside of what is well documented here on how to go at this problem the ways which are most documented are the melt first or treat with chemicals and then precipitate the Pd and Silver.
I hadn't seen any mention of mechanical methods and because of the density difference for the Palladium I was wondering about how well something like a shaker table or even miller table might work?
My idea would be to have the monolithic capacitors turned to fine powder via a ball mill and then slowly add them wet to either shaker table or miller table, then collect the concentrates.
I know this method wouldn't be the end all be all of recovery for 100% recovery but I'm wondering if it would at least be useful in helping to remove most of the unwanted base metals?(most importantly Tin) and the ceramic?
I don't currently have either of these tools available to me but thought I would start a discussion on the topic. What are your thoughts on the idea? or anything you might change/add?