# Hard drive platters, last resort



## badastro (Jul 23, 2008)

It seems that no one on this forum has figured out how to extract platinum from hard drive platters  

Even the confirmation of the presence of platinum is sketchy.


So.... How bout some one use a professional refiner to take a crack at the material?

Someone should first dissolve the aluminum away first. The following steps should be performed.

1. Obtain at least 2.5 pounds of the best looking platters
2. Cut up the platters into several pieces with tin snips (fairly easy with the right tool) or band saw
3. Place cut up platters in a big bucket and ad a 50/50 mix of water and muriatic acid, loosely cover said bucket
4. Wait until all aluminum is dissolved or replace acid when necessary
5. When the aluminum is gone, you'll be left with foils; rinse the foils with plenty of water
6. let the foils dry
7. Package the foils and send them to a refiner such as ARA for processing.


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## Lou (Jul 23, 2008)

Ok, I feel like a jerk about it, but I was supposed to EDXS a good bit of samples from Steve several months ago. However, I just haven't had the time/patience to sit down for the couple hours it would take to do the analysis.

In my opinion, I do not think these are worth your time doing aqueously; perhaps gas phase might work if you burnt it all to ash.

Lou


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## lazersteve (Jul 23, 2008)

Lou,

You are being too hard on yourself. Look at how late I am with more than half of my projects. :roll: 

Take your time or don't even bother if you don't feel like it. I agree with Lou 100%, platters should be considered aluminum scrap and nothing more. The amount of Pt in them is not worth the price of the assay.

My recommendation to anyone who wants to confrim this with an assay is be my guest, I've tested them myself, and I conviced they are not worth the effort.

The real concerns I have with processing them (aside from the near zero to miniscule yields) is the handling of the cobalt wastes.

Steve


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## rp5000 (Jul 28, 2008)

Hi, new to the forum here. 

It seems that people have very little info on these hard drive platters, so I did some testing myself and found interesting results. My testing consisted of 1 grams of foil collected from handful of platters that I dissolved in acid. Having access to an X-ray fluorescence analyzer, these are the results.

0.16% Chromium
0.22% Iron
0.24% Cobalt
98.71% Nickel
0.67% Yttrium

No platinum in this here, so I might do one more test. 

Does anyone know of a quick way to dissolve Nickel, while leaving the other elements untouched?


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## synthetiklone (Oct 5, 2008)

I have posted about this elsewhere, you might want to look it up. I use sodium hydroxide to dissolve the aluminium, it is very cheap here, and it works fast.
Just watch the fumes, (hydrogen) and also use large vessel as reaction is violent, also watch the mist, splatter!!
I didnt post final results, but will quick summarise here.
I did recover a very fine silvery powder, after long boiling in each of nitric, rinse then in hydrochloric to try
remove all other metals. The silvery PGM(?) powder would not dissolve, which is only reason why I suspect PGM.
I couldnt test final product, but did dissolve half in boiling AR, and dissolved all. So I suspect PGM. i may be wrong!!!
The other half, I dried, and tried to remove from beaker. It was so fine, and such a little quantity, all it did was turn my spatula a nice silvery colour, like silver paint!
I only did about 10 platters, so there may be something productive in doing quantity.
SK


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## Lou (Oct 5, 2008)

What color was your aqua regia solution?


Lou


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## synthetiklone (Feb 2, 2009)

Hi Lou, sorry so late in reply, been busybusybusy..

I cant remember exactly but translucent blue ring a bell.
I dont really know if it was platinum, but i got alittle bit of the silvery powder on finger, and with a smudge it turned my finger silver. it was very very fine, probably not weighing much at all.


I now have another solution of AR with dissolved platinum in it.
It sure takes a bit to dissolve platinum!, Id simmered it for half hour, and still
there is platinum plating on the surface of the ceramic .

The solution is an orange red colour.

I have tried adding some zinc turnings to it, and it fizzes wildly, and eventually
with a decent handful of zinc, it turns to a clear solution.

I dont know what to do with it all now..?

any ideas anyone?

SK


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