# Non-Chinese PCBs



## kjavanb123 (Nov 6, 2013)

All,

I tried smelting 107 grams of shredded non-Chinese motherboards last night in a small induction furnace, and here is the result;
The smelt metals and ashes from melting epoxy and plastic,



After some grinding and removing the metallic buttons which vary in colors from the ash,



Here is final shot after separating the visible metals from the mess



So the total mass from the furnace was 107 grams the net weight of metals 31 grams, now Can I use the goldbug system made by precious metals refining co to separate Cu Au Pd and Ag from dissolving the alloy in AR?


Best regards,
Kevin


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## Anonymous (Nov 6, 2013)

Are you receiving your boards shredded Kevin, or are you shredding them yourself?

If you are receiving them shredding is there a reason why you cannot get them complete?


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## ericrm (Nov 6, 2013)

for the sake of you experiment i suggest that you mill your black residue ,than dump it in water to allow a mecanical separation of burned non metalic and the metalic.
im very doubtfull that you manage to recover the gold from the ic that way but im often wrong so...


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 6, 2013)

spaceships said:


> Are you receiving your boards shredded Kevin, or are you shredding them yourself?
> 
> If you are receiving them shredding is there a reason why you cannot get them complete?



Spaceships,

No I have them in complete forms, and shred them myself to ease the smelting. 


Regards,
Kevin


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 6, 2013)

ericrm said:


> for the sake of you experiment i suggest that you mill your black residue ,than dump it in water to allow a mecanical separation of burned non metalic and the metalic.
> im very doubtfull that you manage to recover the gold from the ic that way but im often wrong so...



Last time I smelt gold finger cards, using the same induction furnace, it showed 3200 ppm Au in the bulk metallic parts, and no trace in the ash. I think a much better procedure to separate the metals from the ash would be ball mill follow by passing through a seive 10 micron. Ashes pass through the metals stay on top.

I want to test the metals of interest myself using hcl or nitirc acid.

Best regards,
Kevin


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## Anonymous (Nov 6, 2013)

If you're taking in PC motherboards, wouldn't you save yourself a lot of work later by just depopulating the boards and smelting the product you take off the boards? 

At the least then you'll be taking the majority of the copper out of the process from the layers in the board out of your melts. At the very least you could remove the known gold bearing items and concentrate your process.


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## pattt (Nov 6, 2013)

Hi kjavanb,
maybe this is whatyou are looking for?

Pat


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 6, 2013)

spaceships said:


> If you're taking in PC motherboards, wouldn't you save yourself a lot of work later by just depopulating the boards and smelting the product you take off the boards?
> 
> At the least then you'll be taking the majority of the copper out of the process from the layers in the board out of your melts. At the very least you could remove the known gold bearing items and concentrate your process.



Copper is a major base metals in most boards, and recovery of it is easy, and most of the precious metals are recovered at the anode in this process. My objective in this experiment is to smelt all metallic components from the entire board, then based on analysis find an optimum solution to recover precious and non-ferrous metals as many as possible. Hence no cherry picking for me.

Pat,

Thanks for the file, I had seen it on Umicore website before. But so many models and boards out there you cant really know exact value for each boards till you test them yourself and this is what I have been doing.

I will continue this post with ICP analysis of 120 elements in these metallic buttons, and will show you.


Regards,
Kevin


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## Anonymous (Nov 6, 2013)

Thanks for the reply Kevin

If you're looking at an optimum way to recover the PMs and non ferrous metal then bearing in mind the relatively tiny amount of gold on PC motherboards, if you have a way to concentrate that gold without contaminating it in a massive way you could look at doing that.


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 6, 2013)

Spaceship,

I am getting PCBs in 2000lb lot, so this is no home business for me. Will post yield and results soon.

Regards,
Kevin


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## Anonymous (Nov 6, 2013)

Kevin don't worry I wasn't implying that it was a home business. I would suggest though that you look at the yields on these boards in a very detailed manner to make sure that your buy price isn't unrealistic in terms of return.

2000lb is a reasonable lot. PC motherboard is very often refining at less money than it trades for these days, as there is a perceived value between traders that isn't lived up to once it hits a refinery.

I would love to be able to refine our board in the UK however the licencing and H/S requirements make it nigh on impossible.


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## 9kuuby9 (Nov 6, 2013)

Try to melt a sample with an equal amount of borax, And also try to get a conical mold to pour in to.

You will be left with a consistent alloy at the bottom and the slag on top.

This might cost a little more than your normal procedure due to the Borax, But it's very efficient and fast.

On the long therm this method would be much more profitable, and also the alloy can directly be separated in an electrolysis cell, if the copper content is <96%. Thus eliminating the need for a remelt, ball milling and recollecting the small alloy beads. You could also calculate the copper content from one crushed sample, and add copper while you are melting the crushed boards. Ensuring an efficient run in the Cell. The copper is recovered from the cell and added to the next batch.


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 6, 2013)

9kuuby9 said:


> Try to melt a sample with an equal amount of borax, And also try to get a conical mold to pour in to.
> 
> You will be left with a consistent alloy at the bottom and the slag on top.
> 
> ...



Thanks a lot on great tips for smelting, as for electrolysis process after that, I have been talking with Precious Metals Processing Consultants, that would eliminate adding extra copper to reach over 95% copper content?

Best regards,
Kevin


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## 9kuuby9 (Nov 6, 2013)

kjavanb123 said:


> Thanks a lot on great tips for smelting, as for electrolysis process after that, I have been talking with Precious Metals Processing Consultants, that would eliminate adding extra copper to reach over 95% copper content?
> 
> Best regards,
> Kevin



Copper electrolysis, will need an anode of at least <96% copper content. If it's lower than that, other metals will start to plate on your cathode and you'll start to have many problems after that. Unless the scrap itself contains more than 95% then this would work out without any addition of copper. Their is no other way around this, Unless those Consultants are speaking about another method other than electrolysis. The Copper you'll be adding would be a one-time purchase only, besides the growing number of scrap you'll have to buy more.
But It is always recovered back. So no additional costs here, If the scrap doesn't have a copper content of <95% that is.

Kind regards,

9kuuby9


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## ericrm (Nov 6, 2013)

kjavanb123 said:


> ericrm said:
> 
> 
> > for the sake of you experiment i suggest that you mill your black residue ,than dump it in water to allow a mecanical separation of burned non metalic and the metalic.
> ...



that is very surprising to my understanding of the process but number dont lie, how did the ash were tested?

edit : red blood cell are about 12 micron , portland cement is 74 micron i doubt the ash will pass tru 10 micron...


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## bswartzwelder (Nov 6, 2013)

Did I overlook something? I didn't see any yields for nickel. I had thought that gold was plated over top of a nickel plating. Where am I making my mistake?

Bert


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 7, 2013)

bswartzwelder said:


> Did I overlook something? I didn't see any yields for nickel. I had thought that gold was plated over top of a nickel plating. Where am I making my mistake?
> 
> Bert



These beads have not been analyzed yet.

Regards
Kevin


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## goldsilverpro (Nov 7, 2013)

The standard way of doing this is to incinerate until all carbon has been removed, ball mill to break up the ash, screen at 10-12 mesh or, maybe, as fine as 20 mesh, melt the metal on top of the screen and cast into bars, sample the ash that goes through the screen (pulps) with a grain sampler, drill the bars, assay the bars and pulps, and ship bars and pulps to a primary copper smelter (usually in Europe).

10 mesh is about 2000 microns. 10 microns is about 1250 mesh. Eric is right, you'll never get that material through a 10 micron screen. I doubt if you could get it through 100 mesh (150 micron). I have screened the ball-milled incinerated ash through a 40 mesh (420 micron) screen and it took quite awhile to do it. And I would imagine that ground incinerated ash would be finer than what you would obtain by grinding the material you have. If you used fluxes in the melt, that would probably even make the problem worse. 

I can't see that what you have done will be feasible, at all, on a large scale. Even with shredding, the un-incinerated boards will occupy a lot of space. Even a big furnace wouldn't produce much volume, as opposed to what you could do by incinerating first and then melting only the metallics. As far as fumes go, I would guess you would get as many fumes by direct melting as you would by incineration. Whether you incinerate or don't incinerate before melting, you still end up with a pulp that contains metals. The amount of pulp you are generating by direct melting will be greater because it still retains most of the elemental carbon.

We always used gas furnaces to melt the metallics. If the copper percentage was too low, we had to add copper to reduce the melting point so it would melt in the gas furnace. I'm thinking the copper had to be at least 75-80%. On average, I would guess the copper ran about 80-85% in the final refiner's bars. The remaining percentage was composed of the 20, or so, other metals found in the boards. These impurities will cause all sorts of havoc when you attempt to plate the copper out. What type solution do you plan on using (very important)? I doubt if the gold bug will work with the amount of impurities that will be present. However, you can probably send them some refiners bars and see if they can work out a system for you. The only successful electrolytic system I've seen work on refiners bars was a membrane cell with an anodic membrane (only passes anions) divider using about 10% sulfuric. The membrane prevented the metals from plating out. The PM's remained in the anode sludge and were filtered out. The copper was cemented out of the solution with iron.


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 7, 2013)

GSP,

This induction furnace I used is consuming only 40kw-hour, which is very cheap locally, plus the entire loading to complete smelt takes only 10 minutes, I used borax but not enough, plus I poured the mess into a graphite crucible, rather a colical mold. But isn't this same as incineration both produced ashes and smelted metals.

As for copper percentange, the sample gold finger cards I smelted, it contained 58% Cu, and 38% Zn, and 3200 ppm gold, how would I to remove zinc which will set the alloy copper content to 95% plus purity along with gold and other precious metals? Since it is alloyed I assume pyrometallrugy is out of the question right?

Regards,
Kevin


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## goldsilverpro (Nov 7, 2013)

kjavanb123 said:


> GSP,
> 
> This induction furnace I used is consuming only 40kw-hour, which is very cheap locally, plus the entire loading to complete smelt takes only 10 minutes, I used borax but not enough, plus I poured the mess into a graphite crucible, rather a colical mold. But isn't this same as incineration both produced ashes and smelted metals.
> 
> ...



The ashes are totally different. Yours are full of carbon and the carbon in the incinerated ashes has essentially been removed by burning. Some carbon in yours has probably been burned off but most is still there. The flux coated it and prevented oxygen from contacting the carbon. Look at the color. The black is carbon. Well incinerated ash will usually be a light gray. Carbon tends to retain PM's.

According to the numbers you gave, I estimate the value of the boards is $12/pound. However, in the grand scheme of things, considering that the values on boards can run all over the map, the sample you ran is so tiny it is meaningless. If you ran 2000# of material, it would be a different story. BTW, at 5 melts/hour in that induction furnace, how long would it take to run 2000#?

Awhile back, I think I posted some patent and book links that gave methods of separating Cu from Zn, electrolytically.


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## Lou (Nov 7, 2013)

One thing we often recommend for people looking to upgrade the Cu content in their bars for electrolytic parting is to use reverse cementation (copper sulfate). This removes the iron, aluminum and zinc. Alternatively, one can blow air through the melt but that's a slaggy process.

Most of the tin can be fluxed out with the appropriate basic flux (tin is quite a bit more reactive with alkali fluxes than copper, and gold/silver completely untouched when copper is in such excess).

Not a big fan of borax on melts like this. Borax (and silica) are good for iron removal, but the flux is a very viscous glass than leads to entrainment of PMs.


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## ericrm (Nov 26, 2013)

i was wondering what happened with your assay? you did try to melt a lot of different boards on different tread but suddently you stopped posting? i would bet that everybody is impatient to see your result


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 27, 2013)

Ericm,

The alloys are sent to the lab called them this morning and they said will be ready by Saturday next week which I shall post in approprate posts.

Thanks
Kevin


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## kjavanb123 (Dec 1, 2013)

Lou said:


> One thing we often recommend for people looking to upgrade the Cu content in their bars for electrolytic parting is to use reverse cementation (copper sulfate). This removes the iron, aluminum and zinc. Alternatively, one can blow air through the melt but that's a slaggy process.
> 
> Most of the tin can be fluxed out with the appropriate basic flux (tin is quite a bit more reactive with alkali fluxes than copper, and gold/silver completely untouched when copper is in such excess).
> 
> Not a big fan of borax on melts like this. Borax (and silica) are good for iron removal, but the flux is a very viscous glass than leads to entrainment of PMs.



Lou,

Please kindly advise for reverse cementation the refiner bar would be at cathode and a pure sheet of copper would be anode with electrolyt consists of copper sulfate.

Thanks
Kevin


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## ericrm (Dec 1, 2013)

kjavanb123, it is cementation, it is common knowledge if you read the forum, what hapen if you cement copper salt with iron??? copper become metalic and the metallic iron replace copper as a salt... plz advise please do some work from your side...


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## niteliteone (Dec 1, 2013)

Generally I am able to understand what is written here on the forum, But these 2 posts don't sound like they are talking about the same thing here.
Can someone explain further if and how these are the same or different statements :?: 


> Lou wrote:
> One thing we often recommend for people looking to upgrade the Cu content in their bars for electrolytic parting is to use *reverse cementation (copper sulfate)*. This removes the iron, aluminum and zinc. Alternatively, one can blow air through the melt but that's a slaggy process.





ericrm said:


> kjavanb123, *it is cementation, it is common knowledge* if you read the forum, what hapen if you cement copper salt with iron??? copper become metalic and the metallic iron replace copper as a salt... plz advise please do some work from your side...


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## butcher (Dec 1, 2013)

I have to admit sometimes I also have a hard time understanding some comments, and I am really not sure about this one either.


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## ericrm (Dec 1, 2013)

sorry if i was hard to understand, and maybe lou is talking about something else ... if that is the case well lou will probably explain it ... but for what i understand when you have a mix of different metal containing pm ,and you wish to add copper and reduce the amount of the other base metal ,you could be using an acid solution containing a copper salt. the reaction will be the cementation of the copper over the undesired other base metal... so rather than cementing the value out you cement the base metal out (in this case copper)


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## niteliteone (Dec 2, 2013)

Ericm,
How would you "cement" copper out of a solution containing PM's without cementing the PM's along with the copper :?: 
I don't remember reading how to do that.


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## g_axelsson (Dec 2, 2013)

It's cementing copper onto scrap pcb:s -> iron, zinc, tin, lead and aluminum goes into solution while copper is cemented. Then when you melt the board you get a copper bar with higher amount of copper than you would ordinary get.

Both Lou and ericrm is talking about the same thing.

Göran


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## butcher (Dec 2, 2013)

Göran,
Thanks I guess I missed the main part of the discussion, the circuit boards, that clears up my confusion.
lead would form insoluble sulfate.


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## g_axelsson (Dec 2, 2013)

Thanks, I had forgotten about lead sulphate being insoluble. I just started to go through some of the major metals you will find on a circuit board and in the end made a fool out of myself. 8) 
Lead will cement the copper, turn into insoluble lead sulphate. But I wonder if not lead sulphate will turn into lead oxide, litharge, when melting the metals together so it mostly doesn't end up in the final metal bar.

Another twist on this method could be to use copper chloride from the AP process. That is exactly what I use to take the pins off P4 and other modern fiber CPU:s where the pins are soldered onto the surface. In just 10-20 minutes you can scrape off the pins. The tin dissolves and the pins are now covered in a crust of copper.
It is a good way to finish off old contaminated copper chloride solution before treating the waste.

Göran


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## butcher (Dec 2, 2013)

Göran,
When posting sometimes we do not always think every thought through, (we all make mistakes, if we didn't, we wouldn't be doing anything), I know you knew lead sulfate is insoluble and you were just not thinking about it at the time you posted, I didn't think much about it, but thought I would mention it for those who did not know.

The copper chloride solution would work, it would also make an insoluble white powder of lead chloride, but the lead chloride powder can be dissolved in hot water, where lead sulfate cannot.


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## g_axelsson (Dec 2, 2013)

We all write for our audience. 8) 

Göran


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## niteliteone (Dec 3, 2013)

Thanks for the explanation Göran and Butcher.
Now I can honestly say I learned something today. (I hope)
I would assume this is to be done before the PCB's are incinerated as per this thread, as it would help lower base metal content of the PCB's "and" increase overall copper content of the metals after the incineration.


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## Platdigger (Dec 3, 2013)

Some how I don't think this is what Lou was talking about.
He said to upgrade the "bars". In other words, bars that are all ready poured.
At least this is how I read it.


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## freechemist (Dec 10, 2013)

Apparently there seems to be quite a bit of confusion about this thread.

*November 7th, 2013, Lou suggested:*


> One thing we often recommend for people looking to upgrade the Cu content in their bars for electrolytic parting is to use reverse cementation (copper sulfate). This removes the iron, aluminum and zinc. Alternatively, one can blow air through the melt but that's a slaggy process.



*December 2nd, 2013, niteliteone wrote:*


> Ericm,
> How would you "cement" copper out of a solution containing PM's without cementing the PM's along with the copper? I don't remember reading how to do that.



*December 2nd, 2013, g_axelsson wrote:*


> It's cementing copper onto scrap pcb:s -> iron, zinc, tin, lead and aluminum goes into solution while copper is cemented. Then when you melt the board you get a copper bar with higher amount of copper than you would ordinary get.
> 
> Both Lou and ericrm is talking about the same thing.


 and further on:


> Thanks, I had forgotten about lead sulphate being insoluble. I just started to go through some of the major metals you will find on a circuit board and in the end made a fool out of myself.
> Lead will cement the copper, turn into insoluble lead sulphate. But I wonder if not lead sulphate will turn into lead oxide, litharge, when melting the metals together so it mostly doesn't end up in the final metal bar.



*December 3rd,2013, Platdigger wrote:*


> Some how I don't think this is what Lou was talking about. He said to upgrade the "bars". In other words, bars that are all ready poured.
> At least this is how I read it.



As far as I am able to judge it, Lou meant, to add copper sulfate to the melt, thus "upgrading" it with metallic copper, and removing other, unwanted base-metals out of the metal-phase, these being oxidized and so transferred as cations (e.g. Fe3+) into the flux-phase, whereas metallic copper (from added copper salts/oxides) enters the metallic phase. Such a procedure would replace the slaggy process of blowing air through the melt.
Where I worked, it was a quite general procedure in similar smelting processes, to add copper oxide(s) to the melt, using either copper-(I)-oxide or copper-(II)-oxide.
A "cementation-reaction" must not necessarily occur in an aqueous solution, if it is also understood quite generally as a redox-reaction involving a more precious metal (e.g. copper, as copper oxide) dissolved in the flux-phase and a less precious metal from the metallic phase (e.g. iron, tin, zinc).


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## ericrm (Dec 10, 2013)

freechemist said:


> Apparently there seems to be quite a bit of confusion about this thread.
> 
> *November 7th, 2013, Lou suggested:*
> 
> ...



plz tell more ,i didnt knew that, how does the copper sulfate react? does the iron become a sulfate in the slag or does the "sulfur making the sulfate part" become something else?


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## Smack (Dec 10, 2013)

Lou was talking about working with ground up electronic material, prior to melting and the copper cell not with chemicals.






For accuracy


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## niteliteone (Dec 10, 2013)

Smack said:


> Lou was talking about working with the melt not with chemicals.


Now it makes since  

Freechemist
Thanks for clearing up the confusion.
I was doing all right until the mention of ""reverse cementation"" being a chemical enhancement of the copper before melting, which started my questions.

Thanks guys


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## freechemist (Dec 11, 2013)

*Ericrm*
The sulfate remains dissolved in the flux, the slag respectively, while Cu(II) is reduced by any metal, less precious than copper, present in the smelt-mix, to Cu(0), metallic copper. The reducing metal itself is oxidized and dissolved in the flux (slag), as a cation.
The same redox reaction occurs in water, too, if you treat an aqueous solution of copper sulfate with e.g. metallic zinc, the sulfate-anion remaining in solution, virtually unaffected.

*Smack*
Lou was talking about working with the melt *and* with chemicals. He suggested, to add copper sulfate - a chemical - to the melt.


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## Smack (Dec 11, 2013)

That's true, but he wasn't talking about cementing pm's from a chemical solution, that was my point in case it was not clear.


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## skippy (Dec 11, 2013)

Any more info on copper sulfate's action in the melt? The sulfate would decompose at this temperature - would the SO3 help oxidize the metal, or would it leave the melt?


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