# IC cons for resabed01



## rusty (Mar 20, 2013)

This thread dedicated to forum members IC chips that are being sent to me to mill into powder then run through the centrifuge.

It's here that we'll post the process live from both ends, I as I do my part then resabed01 as he his part.

resabed01 please post your weight and tracking number here, once I receive the package I'll re-weigh, if there is any discrepancy from the unopened package weight I will return the package as received. So please record your weights, I'll post mine here along with pictures.


----------



## resabed01 (Mar 21, 2013)

Just wanted to say thanks again rusty for your generous offer to crush and run my chips through your centrifuge. I've been following your centrifuge thread with much interest because I have a growing pile of IC chips here and would like to learn a effcient way to process them.
I've incinerated about 2kg of chips over the winter as a small trial batch. My plan was to wash and concentrate the ash to see what gold and other PMs I could get out of it this summer. But winter here won't let up anytime soon. Rusty offered to run this ash through the centrifuge as well so I will include that with the shipment.

The chips I'm sending rusty will be black plastic ICs only. I wanted a good representation of this without other contaminations. The chips will range in size from plastic 486 CPUs and quads down to the teeny 8 legged surface mount. The bulk of them will be DIP chips of all sizes. About 30% of them will be memory chips, the old chunky style.

Chips I'm not sending are ones that have a lot of base metal like a heat sink. Also I'll be keeping the North/South bridge chips for processing myself :mrgreen: . I also removed all the ceramic DIP chips because they are not black plastic and they weigh considerably more skewing the numbers.

The next day or two I will have the chips ready to ship. I'll post some pictures and weights.


----------



## rusty (Mar 21, 2013)

resabed01 said:


> Just wanted to say thanks again rusty for your generous offer to crush and run my chips through your centrifuge. I've been following your centrifuge thread with much interest because I have a growing pile of IC chips here and would like to learn a effcient way to process them.
> I've incinerated about 2kg of chips over the winter as a small trial batch. My plan was to wash and concentrate the ash to see what gold and other PMs I could get out of it this summer. But winter here won't let up anytime soon. Rusty offered to run this ash through the centrifuge as well so I will include that with the shipment.
> 
> The chips I'm sending rusty will be black plastic ICs only. I wanted a good representation of this without other contaminations. The chips will range in size from plastic 486 CPUs and quads down to the teeny 8 legged surface mount. The bulk of them will be DIP chips of all sizes. About 30% of them will be memory chips, the old chunky style.
> ...



Your welcome. I'll post when the package arrives.


----------



## resabed01 (Mar 22, 2013)

Here's some pictures of what I sent Rusty.

Black IC chips, all assorted 8.88Kg







When I pulled out the chips and weighed them I only had about 8kg??? I forgot I incinerated about 2Kg so I had to make up the difference. I quickly harvested another 2.00Kg of memory chips form some ram I have. And I have blisters on my hands to prove it!







So that totals 10.88Kg of Black IC chips.

Rusty also offered to run the ash I have from incinerating 2.14Kg of black ICs. The weight of the ash is 936g. It's been crushed and screened, not perfect because there are still legs mixed in and it could probably use more milling.







Tracking number: 7218809008178898

www.canadapost.ca


----------



## rusty (Mar 25, 2013)

resabed01 your package arrived, weighed at post office 12.550 kg

Chips being processed dry, not incinerated loaded into the ball mill 4:00 PM, will pull them out in the morning around 10:00 am, 18 hours in the mill will be sure to abrade the gold from legs and make nice powder ready for the centrifuge.

There's been plenty of discussion and debate over ball mills, my mill according to some is incorrectly made. I consider it a batch mill and it does whats needed of it.

http://youtu.be/dlsLCo3sRsA


----------



## Palladium (Mar 25, 2013)

I like the simplicity of that ball mill. It looks like something i would build. Simple, functional, and you can beat on it with a 3lb sledge hammer if you want.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaDd34paaQU[/youtube]


----------



## rusty (Mar 25, 2013)

Palladium said:


> I like the simplicity of that ball mill. It looks like something i would build. Simple, functional, and you can beat on it with a 3lb sledge hammer if you want.
> 
> [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlsLCo3sRsA&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]




I do beat on it with a 3 lb sledge, after a run to knock down any gold clinging to the drum. Then use a small paint brush as a whisk to sweep it out once empty.

Think the largest balls in the mill are 3 or 4 lbs each.


----------



## resabed01 (Mar 25, 2013)

:mrgreen: crush 'em up good!


----------



## rusty (Mar 27, 2013)

resabed01 said:


> :mrgreen: crush 'em up good!



resabed01 do you know the vintage of those chips, they were a tough grind after 18 hours dry milling they were only 50% ground up. Finished up wet milling, they're done.


----------



## resabed01 (Mar 28, 2013)

Yeah, I don't recognize any of them now...lol

They are mostly 80s and 90s vintage..... the epoxy has had lots of time to harden I imagine


----------



## rusty (Mar 29, 2013)

resabed01 if you look at your cons second picture below you'll notice the heavier fractions settling out near the bottom. Once my curiosity was satisfied removed the vessel from the source of vibration.

From the camera flask how the precious metals reflect - bottom picture.

I have the cons sitting on the hot water heater drying out.


----------



## resabed01 (Mar 29, 2013)

Rusty, that looks awesome! I bet the camera doesn't do it justice.


----------



## rusty (Mar 29, 2013)

resabed01 said:


> Rusty, that looks awesome! I bet the camera doesn't do it justice.



Your cons certainly do look good and we recovered much more than I had anticipated.

The dry powder on top is the sweeps from inside the ball mill, I still have to add fresh water to the pails and brush them down before adding the waste water through the centrifuge. Just some cleanup stuff left to do.


----------



## resabed01 (Mar 30, 2013)

Been doing lots of thinking about my plan of attack with the cons rusty is producing when I get them back. But first I should try and understand what will be in the mix. The way I see it, no matter how well the chips were milled, alloys won't separate into their base elements. The metals on plated parts can get abraded and separated. There are plated parts, mainly the legs that are covered with gold and tin and possibly palladium. There will be tin/lead solder. There could be gold or silver alloys for brazing the chip die. Stainless steel, copper and alloys that contain iron, nickel and probably a few others I'm overlooking.
If rusty did everything well with the centrifuge, the concentrates should contain copper and everything heavier. I expect the centrifuge will sort these elements and alloys in the same manner in the bowl. But nothing is perfect and the lines will be blurred. I expect to see plenty of solder in the mix, especially if there are bits that have alloyed with gold. Below is a sorted list of possible elements I could expect in chips according to specific gravity. I know I won't see all of those elements.

2.330	Silicon
2.800	Aluminum max.
5.320	Germanium
5.910	Gallium
7.130	Iron cast max.
7.310	Indium
7.310	Tin
7.700	Steel, 440C stainless
7.800	Steel, carbon
7.900	Gadolinium
8.420	63 Sn & 37 Pb
8.650	Cadmium
8.710	Cobalt
8.890	Copper
8.900	Nickel
9.790	Bismuth
10.50	Silver
11.35	Lead
12.02	Palladium
12.41	Rhodium
12.45	Ruthenium
13.534	Mercury
16.69	Tantalum
19.22	Tungsten
19.32	Gold, pure
21.45	Platinum
22.42	Iridium max.
22.57	Osmium

I was thinking of starting off with a wash of boiling water to remove any organics/dirt. Not sure if I want to incinerate as the first step as I think the cons will mostly be metal paste. I could do a caustic soda wash like Hoke advises but I really think that will do little to the crushed plastic IC casings that would be present. Then, move onto washes of hot hydrochloric acid to start the removal of tin and aluminum that may be present.
After that, incinerate or roast the cons before moving onto a hot nitric acid wash to start removing the base metals.
My concern is with the HCL washes, won't they leach the palladium from the mix? If so, I'll have to treat those to recover the Pd.
Thoughts on anything i should do different?


----------



## skippy (Mar 30, 2013)

How well will the sodium hydroxide work on metallic lead and tin rather than oxidized lead and tin? Anybody know? 
I think it's a good idea to get tin and lead out first. I would think you should avoid hcl for getting rid of copper and base metals. I would be worried it will cause problems with silver recovery because of AgCl. You could use HCl if you wanted, but I would think that after that you might want to smelt your cons to change the silver chloride back to silver. You might want to flux and melt anyway, it just seems cleaner and more predictable given how many things we don't know about working with this material or what really is in there. You'll end up with your silver and palladium in a metallic piece that could be dissolved with nitric to get your gold If there's a lot of stuff that isn't dissolving from the sequential nitric and ar digestions, I think it's the only way to be reasonably confident in the thoroughness of the recovery.


----------



## g_axelsson (Apr 1, 2013)

resabed01 said:


> I expect the centrifuge will sort these elements and alloys in the same manner in the bowl. But nothing is perfect and the lines will be blurred.


I don't want to be pessimistic but I'm still skeptic to how well this centrifuge will separate various material. What I see is happening is that the heaviest material will sediment against the wall of the centrifuge but as soon as it is packed in it will not move. When panning or other gravimetric methods for separating out heavier from lighter materials is used you always have it suspended in water during the process.
The commercial centrifugal concentrators that Rusty linked to in the other thread uses water channels inside the wall of the centrifuge to create a fluidized bed where lighter materials is lifted by the water and heavier materials sinks to the bottom (or the wall in case of a centrifuge).

If the ball milled concentrate is made into a slurry with quite a lot of water then I guess that the flow of water could take the lighter ash away while the heavier stuff get stuck to the wall of the centrifuge but there is no way it can separate the heavier sediments along the wall into different fractions without something to liquify the sediments.

Göran


----------



## resabed01 (Apr 1, 2013)

Maybe I am incorrect in thinking the centrifuge will nicely sort all the metals according to specific gravity. I see your point in that the heavies will plant themselves in the bowl and not want to be displaced by those slightly heavier. Water is a good lubricant in this regard but maybe there is something better? Glycol or the addition of some soaps? I know that the centrifuge won't work perfectly for separating gold from the rest of the metals. There are better mechanisms better suited for this task. Maybe it could happen if the operator ran the concentrates through numerous times, classifying and separating but that's time consuming. But I do believe the centrifuge is a very useful tool for concentrating the metal sludge. The plastic IC casing being the biggest headache when trying to recover PMs from ICs, removing this first will greatly help in the later steps of removing the base metals and ultimately, recovering the PMs. Reducing acid use and speeding up the process is the goal.... hopefully :mrgreen:


----------



## rusty (Apr 9, 2013)

g_axelsson said:


> resabed01 said:
> 
> 
> > I expect the centrifuge will sort these elements and alloys in the same manner in the bowl. But nothing is perfect and the lines will be blurred.
> ...



Water is the key, and lots of it. What the centrifuge excels at is collecting fractions within a certain specif of gravity range, if gold is present it will squeeze out the lighter material water at 9.9 lbs to the gallon being flung over the top of the bowel taking excess garbage along.

Göran you would have to run one of these fantastic machines to get a better understanding of how it works. In the meantime wave at the competition as it passes you by.

Yes I linked to a centrifuge with a fluidized water jacket of which both Falcon and Knelson hold various patents on, how much water pressure would you need in the jacket to be effective.

Centrifuges are not new technology, they've been around since the late 1800's, they are very good at what they do but require a lot of water to work properly and this fact makes their use unfavorable in remote locations.

Purchasing that 10 liter reactor was not on a whim, the concentrates I'm getting from the centrifuge are the perfect candidate for that new reactor - basically slimes.


----------



## johnny309 (Apr 10, 2013)

skippy said:


> How well will the sodium hydroxide work on metallic lead and tin rather than oxidized lead and tin? Anybody know?
> I think it's a good idea to get tin and lead out first. I would think you should avoid hcl for getting rid of copper and base metals. I would be worried it will cause problems with silver recovery because of AgCl. .



You have sodium hydroxide (NaOH)...so...you will not be encounter AgCl...if you use distiled water
My worry would be to use a tall plastic jar(in case of Aluminium presence will foam...alot).
I never tested antimony with NaOH(can be present in the pins of IC)....and the alloy of...let"s say 70/30 Sn/Pb solder alloys with NaOH.....alloys have different chemical proprieties then the original metal.


----------



## resabed01 (Apr 10, 2013)

Well, my concentrates arrived back home Monday. There's about 1100g from the chips I sent, roughly 10% or a bit less.
I'm itchin to start processing the cons but I have a few other things I'd like to clear off and finish first. I'm also waiting on a set of beakers I ordered. Plus we're still waiting for nicer weather here. It's snowing again tonight :x .

I was thinking of mixing it well and starting a 100g test batch. Then I can see what percentages of base and precious metals I have. Playing around with a magnet there seems to be a fair bit of iron in there and I'm guessing lead too. We'll see when I get out the acids. I'm still mulling a process over in my head. Been reading Hokes book again to get some direction from her and refresh my memory. the first time I read her book it didn't make much sense. Now that I'm reading it again 3 or 4 years later it's all clicking now.

Thank you very much for running the chips through your centrifuge, Rusty.


----------



## rusty (Apr 10, 2013)

resabed01 said:


> Well, my concentrates arrived back home Monday. There's about 1100g from the chips I sent, roughly 10% or a bit less.
> I'm itchin to start processing the cons but I have a few other things I'd like to clear off and finish first. I'm also waiting on a set of beakers I ordered. Plus we're still waiting for nicer weather here. It's snowing again tonight :x .
> 
> I was thinking of mixing it well and starting a 100g test batch. Then I can see what percentages of base and precious metals I have. Playing around with a magnet there seems to be a fair bit of iron in there and I'm guessing lead too. We'll see when I get out the acids. I'm still mulling a process over in my head. Been reading Hokes book again to get some direction from her and refresh my memory. the first time I read her book it didn't make much sense. Now that I'm reading it again 3 or 4 years later it's all clicking now.
> ...



Your welcome, yea your probably going to have excess garbage as this was not my material and had given it a few extra runs through the centrifuge to make sure I had captured all the precious.

The very top layer in the canister is ball mill sweeps.

I recently purchased some random chips from ebay, this jar is what I'm currently working on.

After the ball mill, recovered the concentrates of which went without incineration or a HCL pre-leach. 

Straight to 50/50 nitric for silver, after removing the chloride returned the liqueur to the AR in the jar. Any palladium will be recovered later.

The insolubles after settling out last evening, four distinct colors.

Be sure to post pictures as you progress with your journey into the world of concentrates, you will enjoy working them.

Best Regards
Rusty


----------



## resabed01 (Apr 22, 2013)

Well, it's time I started working on these concentrates. Last night I got the heavy lump dissolved into a tub of water and did a separation of the magnetic material.
I did this in two stages. From the concentrates bath I captured with a magnet whatever I could and transferred the mud to a intermediate bath. From the intermediate bath 
I did the same, transferred the magnetics out into a 3rd tub for collection. I did this to separate out any material that was non-magnetic that got dragged out from the first bath.
I'd say I got the majority of the magnetic material, not all. The chips were milled superfine which makes a slick, heavy paste when wet.
After a night of settling i poured off the excess water which was pretty clear. I plan on processing these two separately.





The coffee pot on the right is the concentrates, the left is the magnetic material. I started the magnetic material in a HCL leach tonight after I poured off most of the water.
I slowly added HCL not wanting to over do it at first. I kept adding until I had about 50/50. The reaction was started and the pot was self heating and gassing from the reaction.
I'll give it the night to react and I'll tend to it again tomorrow.
The other pot of concentrates I wanted to give it a additional night to settle before I pour off the water.

Nice thing about working with milled material is the particles are so fine and small it takes no time at all for the acids to do their work. Not at all like a crock pot of pins that
will take forever it seems to digest.


----------



## rusty (Apr 22, 2013)

The slick heavy paste will contain some insolubles and these are going to give you a major problem they will form a heavy layer over the values keeping the acids away. You can either stir or divide your material into several containers so that your bottom layers are thinned out.

I started out with three 20 liter pails, then when I thought the leach had done it deed added the sludges into one pail as i only have one torch. The cons have been on heat all week then over the weekend and more today and still not done.

The precious metals will form a crust under the insolubles which become slimy and runny you can pour these off the crust sticks to the bottom of the reaction vessel you almost need a jack hammer to loosen them up so there is no fear of loosing any. 

I've saved the slimes to rework later.

Today while heating my leach fell asleep reading a book when I woke found that most of my leach had evaporated away, this is why my gold chloride crystallized in the filter flask.

For those working incinerated chips you will not experience the heavy crusting of precious metals under the slimes I mentioned above, concentrates is a world to its own.

Do not forget to go after your silver and palladium after the HCL leach, you may have to incinerate before going to nitric.

Heating your coffee carafe be wary of the precious metals crust which has formed on the bottom, they can and will form super hot spots which could crack your pot. I use a stainless steel screen between the pot and hot plate for light heating and a pan full of sand for more vigorous heating.

To heat the 20 liter plastic pail cut the top off an old propane tank, then added a brick to the bottom filling it with water, using a tiger torch to heat the water.


----------



## butcher (Apr 22, 2013)

When I have powders to heat the ceramic casserole dish is my tool of choice.

Rusty is correct about the powders settled in the bottom of the coffee pot, creating a hot bottom which will crack the glass at the base of the pot.


----------



## resabed01 (Apr 23, 2013)

I know the limitations of the common coffee pots but I appreciate the reminder anyways. I like using them because they are cheap (more like free), easy to handle and transparent unlike HDPE. I generally don't like to heat HCL solutions other than to drive off chlorine or evaporate excess water from wastes. Time is on my side, I have lots of it and normally don't try and speed things up with heat.
There will be times when I go out of town for a week or more and I'll leave the leaches go at their own pace, stirring, decanting or adding more acid when I get around to it. I don't find heating necessary.

I was lucky enough to find a small Pyroceram dish at a Goodwill store for a couple of bucks. This will be my dish of choice for incineration. I just wish I could find a larger one.

One question, when I added HCL to the fraction with the magnetic materials, I got gassing from the reaction. I'm assuming this was hydrogen as the HCL reacted with the base metals. I also got a wiff of rotten eggs which tells me H2S was there as well. It wasn't very strong but still noticable. Is it common to see H2S gas from a reaction?


----------



## butcher (Apr 23, 2013)

I am not sure where any sulfides would have come from.

Base metals when acidified can give off hydrogen gas in the reaction, if they are above hydrogen in the reactivity series of metals.


----------



## johnny309 (Apr 25, 2013)

Chips cases made from plastic contain sulphur as an hardening agent of the plastic material ....so it is possible to encounter sulphur compounds.


----------



## resabed01 (Apr 25, 2013)

Well, whatever it is.... it's nasty. Trying to avoid exposing myself to the smell


----------



## rusty (Apr 27, 2013)

resabed01 said:


> Well, whatever it is.... it's nasty. Trying to avoid exposing myself to the smell



I'm surprised no one has mentioned it, you should have treated the cons as you would process bench sweeps - incinerate first.


----------



## resabed01 (Apr 27, 2013)

ooops!... you're right, I never incinerated this batch


----------



## rusty (Apr 27, 2013)

resabed01 said:


> ooops!... you're right, I never incinerated this batch



It's unfortunate that Harold is not spending as much time on this gong show as he used to put in, his mind is sharp as a tack and he would not have missed making that suggestion to incinerate.

It seems the entire class has fallen asleep.


----------



## seanconnrey (Apr 30, 2013)

my advice is not to run aqua regia prossece at first because u well lose 
silver metal he well be transformed to Agcl and mexid with the powder .

base metal can be taking with hcl 

Hcl dose not react with silver in my knowledge

if u want to save your silver u must run hno3 wash but if u have a lot of
Tin u must be carful with Tin past he well cause a serieus problem when 
filtring the solution.


----------



## rusty (May 20, 2013)

resabed01 what stage in this project are you, curious how its progressing.


----------



## resabed01 (May 20, 2013)

Not much happening with the recovery... been working on other things. Just spent two of my three day weekend working on the son's car, fixed up a few things and general maintenance.
As soon as I get some more days off work I can get back at theses cons and get some leaches started.
I do all my recovery and refining outdoors and right now the mosquitos are fierce and plentiful so there is not much motivation to go outdoors at the moment :x


----------



## butcher (May 21, 2013)

If it isn't the cold rain and snow its the skeeters, well they will not keep me from the lab having fun.
Now keeping the vehicles running does keep me from enjoying the lab. :lol:


----------



## resabed01 (Jun 11, 2013)

Today I wanted to get started on these concentrates. The chips were milled and concentrated but never incinerated yet so I expect there will be considerable resins in the mix from the IC packages. Not sure if these resins would be inert or cause me problems down the road so I decided to start by incineration first.
The cons are milled very fine, any handling causes clouds of dust to be formed so I have to be careful.
Transferred the cons to a ceramic dish and placed in on the BBQ side burner. I didn't think my 1500w electric hotplate would be up for the task. The gas burner throws a great amount of heat. About 20min in med then after I cranked it to high and let it cook for almost an hour and I watched as the powder changed color starting from the outside and slowly work towards the middle. I knew things were getting hot because the piece of steel I used for stirring and breaking up the lumps came back blue from the heat. Never seen a powder "boil" until today. No smoke but a fair bit of smell.
Not sure if what I did was effective or a waste of time/fuel. It's difficult to incinerate that much powder because the oxygen has no way to get down inside the mix aside from me stirring it.

At least I found out the pyroceram dish is up for the task.

Any suggestions on incinerating almost 1Kg of finely milled concentrates?


----------



## rusty (Jun 11, 2013)

Looking good resabed01, whats next to do.

Wet everything down with a layer of water, mag the fine iron filings out.

You can leave the water to use for your dilute nitric leach, 50/50 water acid when going after the silver and any palladium there could possibly be in there.

Filtering is going to slow you down a tad, try wicking.

Use distilled water on that silver rinse, the distilled water is free of minerals looking to grab some along the way.

I'm using HCL to convert the silver nitrate to silver chloride, then going the scrap iron route to convert this into metallic silver.

Once your satisfied all the silver nitrate has been wicked from the concentrates, proceed to go for the gold using the leach of your choice.


A word of caution, those finely divided powders react violently to acids, I add the acids to my cold and concentrates let the acid work on the cons for a half an hour or more before adding more acid, string at this next addition then when I'm satisfied the acids have taken up some of the metals I add the heat with a very slow paddle speed.

The heavy metals will form a layer under the insoluble mud, so be careful string as not to bring up to much metal into the hot acid at once or you'll have a boil over.

Here's a boil over I had this afternoon, caused by to much paddle speed for too long a duration. You'll not be so lucky should you have a boil over, the reactor saved the day. Didn't loose a gram of values.


----------



## butcher (Jun 11, 2013)

resabed01,
If you would not fill the dish so full when incinerating you will have more room to stir the powders better exposing them to heat and air or oxygen, of course you would have two batches to process.


----------



## resabed01 (Jun 12, 2013)

butcher said:


> resabed01,
> If you would not fill the dish so full when incinerating you will have more room to stir the powders better exposing them to heat and air or oxygen, of course you would have two batches to process.



As they say, hindsight is always 20/20. I thought the same after I started incinerating. The volume of the powder seemed to increase as time went on and the heat climbed. As I stirred the texture was much like ash, light and fluffy.

I have two larger sized Corning ceramic dishes here but I'm not 100% certian they are pyroceram so that's why I went with the smaller dish, it's marked. Is there a way to test them? Perhaps placing the empty dish on the burner and cranking the heat up to high? I'd hate to have one of these explode on me sending hot ceramic shrapnel everywhere.


----------



## resabed01 (Jun 12, 2013)

rusty said:


> Looking good resabed01, whats next to do.
> 
> Wet everything down with a layer of water, mag the fine iron filings out.
> 
> ...



Thanks for the advice Rusty. Magnetic seperation was the first thing I did. From the total I pulled out almost 10% of the solids that were magnetic. Some small trace amounts still exist but I don't think there will be enough to cause problems. I'll give it another water wash and go over it with the magnet again before I start leaching. I think my biggest enemy here will be tin. I wanted to do a HCL leach first to remove tin, aluminum and anything else that wants to hitch a ride with the HCL. After that, incineration again before moving onto nitric acid.
Before I start any leaches I want to find a suitable vessel that will be large enough to prevent boil overs as I expect a fairly rowdy reaction. Four litres would be enough, maybe more. I know the coffee pots won't work in this case.


----------



## rusty (Jun 12, 2013)

resabed01 said:


> rusty said:
> 
> 
> > Looking good resabed01, whats next to do.
> ...



Give yourself plenty of headroom, start with the amount of acid you figure is needed for the job then add a teaspoon full of concentrates periodically. Once each teaspoon full has settled down add another.

My recent boil over reactor had 4 liters of material plus the leach so figure that I had 6 liters of headroom not counting above the level mark and the lid cavity.


----------



## rusty (Jun 12, 2013)

Small 5 lb batch that needs the numbers crunched, after the ball mill, put the milled material into what I figured would do for the 50/50 nitric leach. 

Using this water to slurry the milled chips pulled out the magnetic material, from here I added my nitric in small increments taking up the silver and any possible palladium.

Filtering the silver nitrate the solution came out almost water clear, from the filter dripped to filtrate into a flask which had some hydrochloric acid, as the silver nitrate converted to chloride a beautiful mound of silver chloride formed inside the flask.

I might add that the chips processed had magnetic legs.

After several rinses with distilled water there was no more chloride forming inside the flask telling me the filtrate in the filter was now free of silver. From experience I know this not to be true as silver will later show up during the evaporation of the AR.

Silver chloride from the AR will catch in the filter as the gold chloride passes through so its not big deal.

After filtering the silver nitrate free of the concentrates, I go straight to AR. Finely divided gold goes into AR at ambient temperature very nicely, which is what I have going on with the pot below. 

Once my AR has stopped reacting then comes the heat to catch those more persistent precious metals - like platinum.

At no time have I incinerated the concentrates, your doing a lot of unnecessary work and using an excess of acids.


----------



## Rustjunkie (Jan 13, 2014)

Did this batch ever get completed?


----------



## resabed01 (Jan 13, 2014)

Not yet, It was put on hold for the winter.


----------



## Rustjunkie (Jan 13, 2014)

Glad to hear it's not been forsaken considering all the time and work put into it by both of you so far.


----------



## resabed01 (Apr 28, 2014)

Over the winter I purchased a bunch of 2000ml beakers with this project in mind. The concentrates fit nicely into one of these and leaves about 3/4 of the space as headroom. I also found some clear glass pyrex cereal bowls at a goodwill store that fit perfect for use as a watchglass. With this gear I wanted to finish these concentrates this year. Work and life consumes a lot of my time so my backyard recovery and refining moves along slowly. It's now warmed up enough outside so things don't freeze overnight so I wanted to get started on this.
Having incinerated the concentrates last summer, I started with the nitric leaches. I did 3 in total, 24hrs each all while sitting on a hotplate. The first one was most likely the weakest. The second pulled out some more color than the first. These two leaches tested with stannous and showed a very faint presence of gold. I kept these separate and it is right now it's on a hotplate with a measured amount of sterling added to consume any excess nitric before I drop out PMs with copper.
The third nitric leach tested with a strong presence of gold. This I expected because I wasn't happy with the quality of incineration I did last year and I'm sure some chlorides got through. I poured this leach off and set it aside.
Now, I'm on the first leach of AR and I expect to do 3 of these as well @ 24hrs each with washes of DH2O between. The first AR leach has been bubbling away nicely all day now. Tomorrow I'll pour it off and rinse before moving onto the second.

Working with these concentrates is time consuming because they are ground so fine. It takes pretty much a whole day for them to settle so I can decant. Also, once they sit overnight they harden like cement and it takes considerable effort to stir them up again so the leaches can be effective.

At this point it's impossible to guess how much gold is in there... it could be 1 gram or it could be 15.


----------



## Rustjunkie (May 13, 2014)

resabed01 said:


> Working with these concentrates is time consuming because they are ground so fine. It takes pretty much a whole day for them to settle so I can decant. Also, once they sit overnight they harden like cement and it takes considerable effort to stir them up again so the leaches can be effective.
> 
> At this point it's impossible to guess how much gold is in there... it could be 1 gram or it could be 15.



Is there any way you could get someone like a local scrap yard or one of the forum refiners to analyze it with an XRF ?
It might read out something like this..... on a 30 gram sample as it came out of the ball mill.
0.726 % Pt
1.83 % Au
4.14 % Ag
0.324% Pd


----------



## Rustjunkie (Nov 18, 2014)

Rusty is still wondering if you have gone any further with this ?


----------



## resabed01 (Nov 18, 2014)

If I remember correctly I pulled about 1.5g of gold out of those concentrates. Disappointing to say the least. I still have everything set aside including a small cup with some dirty Ag and Pd that i pulled out.
In my opinion, the only way to do black ICs is to incinerate first to unlock the bond wires from the resin. This first step is crucial.
I'm now working on a 5.36kg batch of black ICs taken from RAM sticks. They were double incinerated and I should have those complete by next year.


----------



## g_axelsson (Nov 18, 2014)

Boardsort pays $3.90 per pound, 10.88Kg = 23.98 pound of Black IC chips would give $93.5. At a spot price of $1193/ounce it would represent 2.4g gold at least in mixed lots... and probably more as boardsort isn't buying to lose money.
I'm sad to tell you that you probably lost more gold in the 90% tailing than you had in the 10% concentrate.

I don't want to gloat, but I had real reasons for being skeptical in the beginning.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=17717#p180573

A centrifuge with a fluidizing bed is a wonderful thing to have when dealing with ores, but ball milled raw IC:s is far from a gold ore and Rustys centrifuge isn't fluidizing and when you get a solid sediment in the bottom everything will go over the edge.
Rusty said "if gold is present it will squeeze out the lighter material water". No, not if gold is mixed and smeared all over the place. The size of the particles also plays a large role.

Ok... may I gloat a little bit at least...


rusty said:


> Göran you would have to run one of these fantastic machines to get a better understanding of how it works. In the meantime wave at the competition as it passes you by.


Waving goodbye to Rustys centrifuge as it passes me by, spewing gold in any direction... :mrgreen: 

And for the record, I have spent five years at the university studying physics and among other things fluid dynamics. I understand how a centrifuge works.

Göran


----------



## Harold_V (Nov 19, 2014)

Rustjunkie said:


> Rusty is still wondering if you have gone any further with this ?


Rusty is no longer a registered member of this board.

Harold


----------



## Rustjunkie (Nov 19, 2014)

Out of respect for the forum, it's rules and other members, my questions are not really personal. This started as a detailed experiment laid out so even I could follow and understand it. I have followed the centifuge thread both here and in occasional correspondence with Gill and see no harm in relaying the results. I am sitting on a a fair bit of similar scrap that I am considering preparing for recovery or refining. I thought the idea was to document the processes from beginning to end, for all to see. For my part here I am taking everyone at their word as this goes from a given weight of chips hopefully to pictures of a refined product. After milling the powder and seeing it being run through the centrifuge the various metals are separated by weight and the lighter materials flowing over the edge and caught in a settling vessel so nothing is lost or discarded, ever. Up to this point it has been treated as ore. No?


----------



## g_axelsson (Nov 19, 2014)

Rustjunkie said:


> After milling the powder and seeing it being run through the centrifuge the various metals are separated by weight and the lighter materials flowing over the edge and caught in a settling vessel so nothing is lost or discarded, ever. Up to this point it has been treated as ore. No?


If nothing has been lost then Rusty has the missing gold if Resabed01 only got a kilo of concentrates back.

Rusty had a too simplistic view of how a centrifuge works. If you ignore basic principles then you will fail.
A centrifuge works on fluids, not sediments. It works on particles suspended in fluids. It even works on separating different isotopes of atoms when it is in fluid or gaseous form. As soon as there is a sediment the particles are fixed in place and won't move. Anything washed away from the surface will bring both heavy and light materials with it.

What sinks faster in water, a gold particle or a small rock? Correct answer : it depends.
If the rock is huge compared to the gold particle it will sink faster. The same is true with a centrifuge, smaller gold particles can sink slower than larger but less dense particles. Ligher particles of the same size sinks slower but if the particle sits close to the bottom it can reach the bottom before a heavier particle that is higher up can do it.The gold can easily be smeared onto other particles and when it does the combined particle can have a much lighter density than gold.
When particles have sedimented then it is too late to do anything about it and they will soon be covered in more sediments.
It will work just as good as squeezing your tooth paste to separate the heavy stuff from the lighter. It just don't work that way.

Göran


----------



## stoneware (Nov 9, 2022)

Did you finally complete this project if so how much gold did you recover.


----------



## Yggdrasil (Nov 9, 2022)

stoneware said:


> Did you finally complete this project if so how much gold did you recover.


Since you did not reply to a specific individual it is hard to know who you are adressing.
If it is Rusty, he has been banned I think.

Edited for clarity


----------



## stoneware (Nov 9, 2022)

Yggdrasil said:


> Since you did not reply to a specific individual it is hard to know who you are adressing.
> If it is Rusty, he has been banned I think.
> 
> Edited for clarity


resabed01​


----------



## Yggdrasil (Nov 9, 2022)

stoneware said:


> resabed01​


Well he has not been here since 2017, so I would not hold my breath


----------



## Shark (Nov 9, 2022)

Resabed01 can still be found on YouTube. Been a while so I am struggling to recall what name he uses there, possibly the same name as here.


----------

