Telecommunication boards

[necromancer]

Don't eat it!!!
Don't mix it with acids unless you have a damned good fume hood!!!
Learn how to treat the waste!!!

I've used it so much without incident that I believe it is safer than almost any other processes we use.

It is the miracle chemical for what we do.

you are a trained professional hydrometallurgist, maybe a quick reminder for all the new people here about your education & experience in the industry.

or link to a previous post will do.

some of us have read your posts about new trainees "being nervous around chemicals" and the outcome of there training. some of us have not


EDIT: added the word "hydrometallurgist" + http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrometallurgy

 

[kjavanb123]

I got all the info I needed for a safe cyanide processing by reading posts made by the master GSP, and it has been working out great. I vote for a single post with all related topics so if someone chooses the cyanide path it can be studied in one consolitated post.

I also got 5grams of pure gold powder processing 6.60 kg of pins, the weight includes the plastic covers.


Regards
Kj

 

[kjavanb123]

All,

Per instructions provided by GSP, I tried to process these transistors removed from telecomm boards so here is a stepby step with pictures;

1- The batch of transistors that were processed;


2- First added dilute 50% nitric acid to cover the materials and 2 inches on top of them, boiling;


3- After boiling for 20 minutes here is what it looked like;


4- Decanted, added fresh nitric acid and let it boil;


5- Decanted, there were some minor kovar left, so I added hcl and let boil, added small amount of nitric untill all gold foils dissolved;


I will have the yield tommorow

Thanks
Kevin

 

[kjavanb123]

All

These are incinerated ICs removed from telecomm boards, I only processed small amount to use Patnor methods, here is the picture show.

Incinerated ICs being crushed to fine powder;


Removing ferrous metals from the pile,


Fine powder left;


Ferrous metals after rinsing;


Non-ferrous portion rinsed clean,


I tried use panning for a small sample of fine powder, not so succesful so I dumped that into the beaker with non-ferrous metals, and added hcl put it on heat dropped few ml of nitric and added a pinch of hydrogen peroxide, to see the result tommrow.

Regards
Kevin

 

[Geo]

All,

Per instructions provided by GSP, I tried to process these transistors removed from telecomm boards so here is a stepby step with pictures;
Thanks
Kevin

kjavanb123, I just did a small batch of those myself. Mine was slightly more than a half kilo. I skipped the pre-wash and went straight to AR. Other than to remove tin, pre-washing is great for people that are unsure and inexperienced with AR. An experienced refiner can pretty much nuke just about anything in AR and recover the gold. Just don't expect the solution to be nice and clean and do expect to have to re-refine the gold recovered. By skipping the pre-washes it saves time to the finished product. Just remember that when using AR without pre-treating, ALL the metal has to be dissolved without exception. An excess of free nitric in this circumstance is not that bad and even helpful. Just be mindful that there will be excess nitric and know how to deal with it before starting. I use sulfamic acid dissolved in water. It works very well to dispel nitric from solution.

 

[kjavanb123]

Geo,

I couldnt get anything out of those transistors, had I used cyanide it wold have been a lot less mess to deal with, just had to cut the hat off or crack them open so cyanide could get to under the hat.

Regards
Kj

 

[kjavanb123]

All,

I got 3 kg (6lbs) of Ta caps off of the telecomm boards, I read first they are incinenrated, but since I mixed them up during scrapping, I put all of them to incineration, is this a right move? Or should I sort them ceramic types, can types and etc?

Here is a batch of mixed types of Ta caps,


Here the same batch after incineration, I just let them turn white or powdery brown,


Here is a close shot of what remained after incineration, I believe those cylender items are Ta??


Now my plan for processing these would melt them all with excessive copper to make a copper anode, and use copper refining cell to recover copper and Tantalium in anode slime. Please advise.

Regards
Kevin

 

[Anonymous]

Kev

Tantalum melts at 3020 degrees celsius. We separate it and sell the caps on their own.

Regards

Jon

 

[kjavanb123]

All,

I also did a small batch of ICs which was scrapped off the telecomm boards, and after incineration to white color, powder them, used a magnet to remove all the ferrous, and separate the non-ferrous from the ash, panned the ash, got some gold, have not dissolved it in AR yet, but it looked really nice und the loop, I tried to melt non-ferrous using a cupola furnace but since I did not have the crusible, and borax it just turned to beads. Here are the picture show;

My cupola furnace,


Incinerated ash after copper wires were removed by nitric acid, spots with light brownish are gold wires,


A close up view of the light brownish spots in previous photo, it is all very tiny gold bonding wires,


Here came out cupola furnace, these were non-ferrous pieces separated from the ash, and ferrous ones, my plan for the whole batch is to melt the ferrous and non ferrous items all together with extra amount of copper to make a copper anode and use electrolysis to recover copper and if any gold bonding wires are trapped in them, it should be at the anode sludge,


More pictures when I am done with whole 26 lbs of materials

Regards
Kevin

 

[kjavanb123]

Spaceship,

I am aware of the melting temperature, this was just incineration, I am guessing tantalium would dissolve when melting with copper to make the copper anode.

Regards
Kevin

 

[Anonymous]

No problem, what kind of furnace are you looking to use to do this?

 

[kjavanb123]

Spaceship,

My induction furnace is not ready yet, so I have to use this cupola furnace to melt the beads, I just need insulating materials to put on top of it to keep the heat inside.

Regards
Kevin

 

[g_axelsson]

All,

I got 3 kg (6lbs) of Ta caps off of the telecomm boards, I read first they are incinenrated, but since I mixed them up during scrapping, I put all of them to incineration, is this a right move? Or should I sort them ceramic types, can types and etc?

Here is a batch of mixed types of Ta caps,
View attachment 2

There is a lot of random components mixed in that lot. The big blue one is a MOV (Metal Oxide Varistor), small blue rectangular looks like MLCC:s, elongated yellow ones, resistor arrays, ... and so on.

Here the same batch after incineration, I just let them turn white or powdery brown,
View attachment 1

Doesn't look like much Ta, incinerated tantalum capacitors leaves a black Ta pellet.

Here is a close shot of what remained after incineration, I believe those cylender items are Ta??
View attachment 3

That looks like a perfect shot of a resistor, the metal film wrapped around the ceramic base. No Ta there.

Now my plan for processing these would melt them all with excessive copper to make a copper anode, and use copper refining cell to recover copper and Tantalium in anode slime. Please advise.

Regards
Kevin

A large part of tantalum capacitors is made up of Ta oxide, that would not dissolve in molten copper and would end up in the slag. My prediction is that almost no tantalum would dissolve in copper at normal copper melting temperatures.
You have taken your scrap from easily sorted components into not so easily sorted incinerated mess, and if you would get any Ta into a copper alloy and electrolyzed it you would have it mixed up in a toxic mess instead. You are moving in the wrong direction.

Recommended reading for deeper understanding of tantalum capacitors : http://www.avx.com/docs/techinfo/bsctant.pdf
Security information : http://www.avx.com/docs/Catalogs/safety.pdf

Göran

 

[kjavanb123]

Goran,

There are a lot of Ta caps in this mix, but they are the ones removed at the beginning of scrapping, at near the end workers pretty much removed anything that resembled the yellowish Ta caps. So another sorting the 6lbs mixed batch is required to get the right Ta caps.

Regards
Kevin

 

[Anonymous]

Kevin

Goran is talking sense here. You're making life more difficult than it needs to be.

 

[kjavanb123]

All,

As for Ta caps, due to my location is not worth to send them to the US buyer, so I will procees them at a later time.

Back to ICs, I melted all non-ferrous metals separated from ash, into the following, so I can use electrolysis, and as suggested by Goran in other threat, use cyanide leach for the ferrous parts.

The empty crucible with added 1 part sodium carbonate, and 1 part borax,


Melted non-ferrous parts into an ingot,


Tomorrow will post photos of my copper refining cell in action.

Regards
Kevin

 

[kjavanb123]

All,

This is just an idea, so please advise, after scrapping the items from this 100 lbs of telecomm boards, and incinerator company messed up my boards and dumped them in landfill after incineration, I was thinking the following system;

(Considering $12 per day for labors to disassemble boards manually)

1- Manually remove all the ICs, N/S bridges and fingers, CPUs, and pins
2- Manually remove Fe, steel, and Al as much as possible.
3- Grind the remain of boards to fine powder, assuming at that size, the copper embeded within the plastics is free,
Use a blue bowl to spearate plastics, and metallics,
4- Use magnet to remove ferrous parts
5- Melt all non-ferrous into anode
6- Cyanide leach all gold plated items, along with ferrous parts in item 4.
7- copper refine electrolysis the anode produced at number 6.

Obviously, this is not a full scale, last time I did with 202kg telecomm boards, with 2 labors it took them 5.5 days to completely remove items from the boards, but left all MLCCs and boards.

Thanks
Kevin

 

[Anonymous]

Kevin, why in the face of all the advice from experienced members are you still hell bent upon reducing everything you get to a pile of mixed metal?

There are professional IT recyclers on here ( and I include myself in that) who are saying to you that this isn't the best way yet you won't listen.

Can I ask a couple of pertinent and valid questions please to clarify some points?

1. Is this a commercial venture -i.e. do you have plenty of cash to throw at it or is it a one man hobby venture? I ask for genuine clarity reasons and not for any other reason.
2. Do you have a refining licence and a sponsor over in the UAE? i.e. Are you doing this on the radar or off the radar?

If it's a fully commercial venture with all the boxes ticked then you need to take a commercial view on it, instead of throwing mud at the wall and hoping some will stick. The basics need to be nailed on, and working soundly but at the moment it appears (at least to me) that it's a clusterbomb scenario with "flavour of the week" projects cropping up with random regularity.

Please please excuse my bluntness here however it's extremely hard to give any kind of sensible advice without being in full possession of the facts. Speaking for myself I could help an awful lot more if I knew.

This post is written with the best intentions in mind.

Regards

Jon

 

[kjavanb123]

Spaceship,

This is a commercial scale for me, and I read all about what pros do on large scales, but I cant trust this incineration company who has a permit to do ewaste, so I thought about using low wage locally to cherry pick, and since I am too far from boardsort and such, shred and grind the boards After Cherry picking, to use gravity separation blue bowl to remove plastics that can also be part of recoverable materials.
So maybe I should have rephrased my question to ask what is the size that boards need k be grinded till all copper foil embded in them liberated, and can blue bowl separate the foil copper and other non ferrous metals from this grinded boards?

Again, I am looking at this on commercial scale, maybe 3 or 4 tons of boards per month, taking advatnage of low wage labors locally, that separate things better so when it comes to electrolysis the anode would be a lot more copper and less junk.

Regards
Kevin

 

[Geo]

Kevin, the quickest way to the finished gold is incineration, milling, washing, magnetic separation and melting the non-ferrous material into anode bars for a copper sulfate parting cell. All your PM's will be in the anode slimes.