# Thoughts on gold recovery sim cards



## andersen113 (May 7, 2019)

Long time reader 1st time poster! 

After reading posts on the forum, watching videos and experimenting I've decided this summer to revisit trying to recover gold from sim cards, now I do notice people try to stay away from them entirely and I want to experiment with them. I have 10lbs got them relatively cheap.

Has any one figured out the best way for maximum yield? I wanted to try in sulfuric cell unsure what will happen. Has any one tried this?


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## Lino1406 (May 7, 2019)

SIM cards are conductive?


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## archeonist (May 8, 2019)

andersen113 said:


> Long time reader 1st time poster!
> 
> After reading posts on the forum, watching videos and experimenting I've decided this summer to revisit trying to recover gold from sim cards, now I do notice people try to stay away from them entirely and I want to experiment with them. I have 10lbs got them relatively cheap.
> 
> Has any one figured out the best way for maximum yield? I wanted to try in sulfuric cell unsure what will happen. Has any one tried this?



I have recovered gold from over 15000 telephone cards as an experiment. The sulphuric cell won't work as only the front side of the card conducts electricity. What does work is to soak the cards in AP solution so you can recover the foils. Don't expect much gold as most of it is just flash gold. After that you could incinerate the remaining chips and go for the gold bonding wires.


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## Palladium (May 8, 2019)

https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=15397

Word of caution!
Hot NaOh should be respected more so than the acids we use!


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## andersen113 (May 9, 2019)

Thank you for the responses! I used my rare earth magnet just to check and all the sim cards are magnetic, can I still do the acid peroxide method? :?: :roll:


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## kadriver (May 10, 2019)

I did a large batch of about 6000 SIM cards. I only did it to make a video for my youtube channel. I used AP. The yield was very low and there was much waste to deal with. I did a separate video beginning with incinerating the SIM cards and I got a better result. If I had to do them again I'd burn them first. The yield was better and much less waste produced.

kadriver


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## anachronism (May 10, 2019)

Personally AP is a terrible way to do these. Use AR of one form or another to strip the gold off then treat the rest in whatever form you will. 

It's quicker, more efficient and generates much less waste if you process in batches.


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## andersen113 (May 10, 2019)

kadriver thank you! Will the fact that the sims are magnetic affect this process? I have tried finding and researching diagrams of sim cards to find out what's in them.


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## anachronism (May 10, 2019)

Maybe Youtube is the way to go. Seems like having a Youtube channel adds to credibility. 

AP is a complete pain in the butt way to do this and a completely unnecessary step if you have access to the materials to make poor man's AR- which you can do easily in the US.


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## andersen113 (May 10, 2019)

I'm sorry anachronism I was in a rush here I am at work, there seems to be some magnetic material in the sim cards, if going straight to AR how will magnetic metal under the gold coating affect the process?


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## anachronism (May 10, 2019)

andersen113 said:


> I'm sorry anachronism I was in a rush here I am at work, there seems to be some magnetic material in the sim cards, if going straight to AR how will magnetic metal under the gold coating affect the process?



Not in the slightest. I've run a lot of these in AR. Well I used to before I realised they were awful. 8) 8)


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## kadriver (May 10, 2019)

andersen113 said:


> kadriver thank you! Will the fact that the sims are magnetic affect this process? I have tried finding and researching diagrams of sim cards to find out what's in them.



I made a video using only 70 grams of SIM cards. I started by burning them into a fine ash. Then adding aqua regia to get the gold to dissolve. There was only about 1/10 of one gram of pure gold. But from only 70 grams of SIMs. I remember adding SMB and the solution turned clear and nothing happened. I thought it was a total failure. The next morning when I came out to my shop there was a brown layer of gold on the bottom of the beaker. I was absolutely thrilled that I even got a result at all.

If I were you, I'd start with a small amount, say 200 grams and burn them like I did, in a steel frying pan. Then crush the ash real fine and boil in aqua regia. Let it cool and filter out the solids. Test the filtrate with stannous, you might get a surprise.


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## g_axelsson (May 11, 2019)

The magnetic material is probably nickel plate under the gold.

AP might let you recover the gold on the pads but not any gold bond wires. There might be aluminium bond wires and in that case there is no gold to recover from within the card.
I would recommend incineration to recover any gold wires and to keep the volume of waste down. Do small tests to find out what works best for you.

I do collect SIM-cards but only of curiosity, I'd like to run one batch when I have enough just to get the experience. There's not a lot of gold in those cards. 

Göran


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## anachronism (May 11, 2019)

g_axelsson said:


> I do collect SIM-cards but only of curiosity,* I'd like to run one batch when I have enough just to get the experience.* There's not a lot of gold in those cards.
> 
> Göran



I'm sure that could be arranged!


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## andersen113 (Nov 28, 2020)

So, I trimmed all ten pounds took 4 days, then I incinerated to powdery ash, ground it through a sieve, put in 5,000ml beaker put on heat added 2,000ml hcl added nitric got some brown fumes, added more hcl and plenty more nitric and didnt really get any brown fumes just the white fumes from hcl. Stuck a piece of filter paper in there. I have old testing solution it tested green not brown stain it boiled for a few hours. Probably no gold based on no fumes? I will probably never do sims again! 

Anything I did wrong based on the little detail I gave?


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## nickvc (Nov 29, 2020)

Any gold there probably dissolved when you saw the brown fumes, chances are you have way too much nitric still left so add sulphamic to convert the nitric and test again or simply precipitate your solution after filtering.


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## andersen113 (Nov 29, 2020)

Hi, thank you for the reply, yea there is tons of excess nitric in there as almost none of the hundred or 200ml were used, I only used so much because I wasnt really getting a reaction.


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## andersen113 (Dec 20, 2020)

So most of the solution is filtered, I stuck a 2 piece of copper in there from the last time a couple years ago I tried sim cards. I tried copper because I never seem to precipitate gold with SMB from sim card solutions. I notice now after an hour or so the copper is black with a very fine powder! Hopefully I get a couple grams from the 10lbs of sims. I took the beaker out of my fume hood tried tipping it to see if any powder on bottom but I accidentally inhaled while my face was over the beaker DO NOTDO THIS : /


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## booneire (Dec 20, 2020)

Anderson

first-time posting.new to the site.love reading all the post and learning all the while.
I'm just gathering up some stock now.i got a few electronic repair shops on board with me as there giving me all there e waste.
I'm curious to find your yield etc
david


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## etack (Dec 22, 2020)

andersen113 said:


> So most of the solution is filtered, I stuck a 2 piece of copper in there from the last time a couple years ago I tried sim cards. I tried copper because I never seem to precipitate gold with SMB from sim card solutions. I notice now after an hour or so the copper is black with a very fine powder! Hopefully I get a couple grams from the 10lbs of sims. I took the beaker out of my fume hood tried tipping it to see if any powder on bottom but I accidentally inhaled while my face was over the beaker DO NOTDO THIS : /



You will be lucky to get anything over a gram on 10#.

SIMs are supper low in gold.

Eric


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## booneire (Jan 18, 2021)

Eric

Thanks for your quick reply. Honestly I'm only seeing this now. I just figured out how to check on my posts etc. I'm on this site most days doing reading and studying. there a lot to learn.
I'll keep gathering stock and keel reading.

David


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## andersen113 (Jan 20, 2021)

So I thought I would finally just post my embarrassing yield. I got 0.. absolutely no gold from 10lbs of sim cards. Only smb collected at bottom of beaker again and stannous tested negative after drop but positive before. I put the solution in stock pot and solids in zip lock bag.vI never got gold from sim cards. :?:


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## etack (Jan 21, 2021)

Somehow I double posted. 
Eric


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## etack (Jan 21, 2021)

Don’t feel bad I bought $10,000.00 of them and there was only 3toz in the 1000#. 

Also you can check you post use the hamburger in the top left side. 

Eric


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## g_axelsson (Jan 22, 2021)

andersen113 said:


> So I thought I would finally just post my embarrassing yield. I got 0.. absolutely no gold from 10lbs of sim cards. Only smb collected at bottom of beaker again and stannous tested negative after drop but positive before. I put the solution in stock pot and solids in zip lock bag.vI never got gold from sim cards. :?:



How could you get solid SMB on the bottom? It's soluble in pure water and decomposes in acid. What is the pH of the solution? SMB needs free hydrochloric acid to work effectively. If you have too little acid the gold is converted or complexed into a colorless compound in solution or suspension. It gets stuck in the colorless state but turns back into gold particles if you add more HCl.

I can't totally explain what is happening, but when you precipitate gold with SMB the solution first turns colorless before gold particles aggregate into larger particles and falls out as the yellow powder. I once had a solution that just turned colorless and never precipitated the gold. The gold dropped immediately when I added more HCl.

Göran


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## Shark (Jan 22, 2021)

g_axelsson said:


> How could you get solid SMB on the bottom? It's soluble in pure water and decomposes in acid. What is the pH of the solution? SMB needs free hydrochloric acid to work effectively. If you have too little acid the gold is converted or complexed into a colorless compound in solution or suspension. It gets stuck in the colorless state but turns back into gold particles if you add more HCl.
> 
> I can't totally explain what is happening, but when you precipitate gold with SMB the solution first turns colorless before gold particles aggregate into larger particles and falls out as the yellow powder. I once had a solution that just turned colorless and never precipitated the gold. The gold dropped immediately when I added more HCl.
> 
> Göran



Thanks for that bit of information. I ran into that colorless solution with no drop recently, and was completely at a loss as to what was going on. I also picked up an extra three grams of missing gold when I tried the hydrochloric addition.


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## g_axelsson (Jan 23, 2021)

Shark said:


> g_axelsson said:
> 
> 
> > How could you get solid SMB on the bottom? It's soluble in pure water and decomposes in acid. What is the pH of the solution? SMB needs free hydrochloric acid to work effectively. If you have too little acid the gold is converted or complexed into a colorless compound in solution or suspension. It gets stuck in the colorless state but turns back into gold particles if you add more HCl.
> ...



That's great news! Thanks for letting me know it worked.  

I ran into this when I had a solution of gold chloride that I evaporated until it was totally dry. I only used water to dissolve the gold, filtered and added SMB. The solution turned colorless and then nothing... after a couple of hours I realized how SMB actually works, so I added a bit of HCl and the gold just dropped right down to the bottom in seconds. Nowadays I always see to that I have the solution strongly acidic with HCl when dropping my gold and I haven't had a problem since that day.

Göran


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## Shark (Jan 23, 2021)

I was boiling some powders in HCl and left it to long. When I tested it, it showed some gold in solution. I decanted it off and let it cool. When I added smb nothing happened. After some fumbling around I tried HCl and it turned brown in just a few seconds. I expected some amount of powders, but was shocked by the amount I got. The only thing I can think of is that I let some nitric slip through from the water wash and it created a small amount of AR. From boiling a bit longer than usual it must have killed the HCl as well. I have no idea if that is the case, but is the only thing that made sense to me.


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## Lino1406 (Jan 23, 2021)

Under some conditions, HNO3 (and H2O2 too) turn Na2S2O5 to Na2SO4 which does not precipitate gold


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## Shark (Jan 23, 2021)

Lino1406 said:


> Under some conditions, HNO3 (and H2O2 too) turn Na2S2O5 to Na2SO4 which does not precipitate gold



Thanks, I can certainly use a better understanding of chemistry. I had never heard of Na2SO4 and had to look that up. (Sodium dithionite) I think the broad range of needed abilities is what keeps me interested in refining.


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## Lino1406 (Jan 24, 2021)

Sorry, sodium sulphate ! Simply


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