# 1,000,000 plus SIM cards



## kjavanb123 (May 4, 2014)

All,

I had a discussion with Iranian national oil products, and they have something similar to SIM cards pictue below, to montitor the usage of fuel in the country, apperntly there are over million pieces of such cards are being disposed, and he was welcomed my proposal to toll refine those cards for them, we have not talked detail as I will have to travel there to meet in person.

Iranian fuel card,



I am thinking cyanide using a cement mixer would be the quickests method please advise.

Regards
Kevin


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## Geo (May 4, 2014)

I'm not sure about any restrictions on environmental issues in Iran, but with such large quantities, incineration to reduce the volume may be an option. I'm not saying to dig a big pit and burn them in the open air but hire a large incinerator to reduce the volume. The resin in the cards should comprise over half of their weight if not more. If it were the type of sims from cell phones, a different process may work better but the volume of plastic may make the job very hard to do unless you are using a commercial cement mixer.


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## glondor (May 4, 2014)

Another viable option would be a punch, electric, preferably roller, as fast as you can make with some type of auto feed. if all the gold foils are in the same spot on the card, them only 1 cutter/punch head is needed. If there are several types, more than 1 cutter/punch would have to be made, and a sorting system devised for "cards by type" 

Depends on how many you get at once I guess. perhaps a shearing process would work on lesser amounts.


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## kjavanb123 (May 4, 2014)

Thanks for your responses. I was thinking to use the same incinerator I used formy boards, ball mill the ash, pass it through fine seive, melt the metallics which I guess is copper and gold, use electrolysis. But cyanide in cement mixer is so fast I am leaning toward that.

Keep you guys posted.

Regards
Kevin


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## samuel-a (May 4, 2014)

I'm 100% with glondor on this.
punch out the contacts+chip and move on to incineration and smelt with copper (i see no need for sieving here but could be wrong), the side with the chip usually holds gold wires in epoxy.

Once incinerated you will have to investigate the ash content and the metal % of it so you could devise a plan of which flux mixture to use, how much collector (if any) to use, smelting temp'...


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## GotTheBug (May 4, 2014)

Is there a problem with going straight to AR for these?


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## glondor (May 4, 2014)

Gold wire inside epoxy chip. A/R won't get it.


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## kjavanb123 (May 5, 2014)

All,

Thanks for your suggestions. I will keep you posted.

Regards
Kj


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## kurtak (May 5, 2014)

I like glondor & Sam's idea to punch out the contact/chip (which will greatly reduce ash from incineration) & Sam's suggestion to smelt - only I would use silver as my collector metal 

not that copper wont work but silver is a much better collector metal to use for 4 reasons which I will explain if you decide to go the smelting route -the short of it being

(1) lower melt temp
(2)flux used to get circulation in the crucible
(3)amount of acid used if Chem leaching for Au recovery
(4)cell time if electrolytic recovery

Kurt


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## Geo (May 5, 2014)

If it's a one time deal, the expense of having a special machine fabricated may eat up a lot of profit. As long as the incinerator is in government compliance, incineration of the whole card may be more cost effective. As long as all the carbon is removed, the fine talcum powder ash can be melted with a collector and flux recovering nearly all of the PM value.


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## kjavanb123 (May 5, 2014)

Kurtak,

Thanks for advise on using silver as collector, however, based on my understanding the metals in these cards are copper and gold plating, hence I may not even add new copper to get its content to 98%.

Geo,
Yes this is one time deal, so since incineration is EPA compatible, then I let them all incinerated, he charges $0.30 per kg ($0.60 lbs), for incineration of my boards and these cards.

I have sent out the documents and awaiting their correspondance.

Best regards
Kj


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## patnor1011 (May 5, 2014)

I also used incineration but only on actual plated part with epoxy on back side. Incinerating whole cards will made you deal with 25x more ash, more room for error and lost values.


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## necromancer (May 5, 2014)

and 1,000,000 should get you enough to put towards your travels, let us know what the yield was and what it costs to travel between the UAE and Iran

and these new pop up ads are the complete crap.


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## kjavanb123 (May 6, 2014)

All,

I got some data on the card and plating sizes, each card weighs 5.10g (0.0112 lb). Plated area is 13x12 mm (0.511x0.472 inches). 
I try to put it in Sam calculator but didnt know the gold thickness on it, so guessing 10 microinches, it gives 0.0007 g of gold each card, it is estimated to have 1.7 million pieces ready to disposed, so that would be 1190g of gold.


Regards
Kevin


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## Geo (May 6, 2014)

Don't forget the bonding wires to the chip. They may be small but add up in large amounts. Three troy pounds is not a bad haul.


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## glondor (May 6, 2014)

I would also consider 10 micro-inches to be a bit thin. From other research I have discovered that 30 micro-inches is required for reliability on pins projected to have 1000 insertion cycles and 50 micro-inches is required for 2000 cycles. I know these are not pins, but there must be some correlation in data for usage cycles.

I certainly would make the effort to contact the card manufacturer for more information, as you have contacts with the issuer? of the cards, it should not be too hard to find out the "offered" or "required" specs of the government contract.


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## kurtak (May 7, 2014)

Kevin

you can make a "cheap" punch & die set up for punching out the contact/chip part of the cards that can be set up in a drill press (as a press not a drill) for fast production punching

Make the punch out of a piece of 1/2" or 3/4" pipe (not sure if 1/2" would be big enough) sharpen the punch end - cut a release slot out of the side - weld a cap on top of the pipe & weld a shaft that will chuck in the drill on top of that --- the idea is like the leather punch in the pic (notice the angle at the top of the side slot for ejecting the punch outs)

Then for the die use a piece of hard wood (oak or maple) or heavy plastic & mill a shallow depression (wood spinning bit) just a bit bigger in diameter then the punch so the punch can punch through the card - along with an L shaped guide/fence/jig to align the cards (pic is just to show the idea of the die/jig)

Kurt


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## canedane (May 7, 2014)

If the cards are stacked like a deck of cards in a frame,and you cut them twice at the long side with a band saw, you can reduce the plastic more than 60%, in a very simple way no matter how order the card is packed. This plastic has a valeou,(i dont know the type of plastic,but it isent poly etyhlen)) and you save +60% for incinerating. If you do this proces in Iran you will save money at the shipping.
Good luck with your project Kevin. 
Henrik


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## canedane (May 7, 2014)

There is used two kind of plastic in this kind of cards,abs, there have a veleou,and pvc there isent recyclebar, you can test the type with a red hot cobber wire, if the plastic burn with a green flame on the wire it is pvc.
Henrik


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## kjavanb123 (May 7, 2014)

Kurt,

Thanks for your detailed info, I am still doing the negotiation with them, as you may be aware anything federal has its pain to get through. I make sure to put all your inputs into design once I get the cards. These cards also frequently used at the gas pump, people of Iran would put them there to know how much gas they used and how much they have left, so as far as frequncy of usage they get to used a lot, what does that mean for thickness of gold plating?

Regards
Kevin


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## patnor1011 (May 7, 2014)

Thickness of plating is only one side of the story.
Gold bonding wires on the other side encapsulated in drop of resin are the cream in this case.
(if your chips look like this one)


http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=19050


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## kjavanb123 (May 8, 2014)

Henrik,

Thanks for your advise, it is very helpful to cut the amount of plastic, it can be sold as plastic scraps at even higher prices which can add the profit.

Patnor,
I will investigate it once I received the samples.

I am also considering $2000 donation if indeed this deal goes through and upon completion to go to this unqiue and great forum and some of the members here who have been my mentors during my years here.



Regards
Kj


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## Anonymous (May 8, 2014)

kjavanb123 said:


> Henrik,
> 
> Thanks for your advise, it is very helpful to cut the amount of plastic, it can be sold as plastic scraps at even higher prices which can add the profit.
> 
> ...



I really wouldn't recommend factoring a profit from the plastic that you cut from these things.


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## patnor1011 (May 8, 2014)

I got 3.3g from 10k sim cards. I would like to stress one point here - that they were new, probably rejects from manufacturing therefore plating was not worn as you may expect on used cards.


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## necromancer (May 8, 2014)

this is what i was saying........

3.3g from ten thousand sim cards (new) X 10 = 33g from one hundred thousand cards

33g from one hundred thousand cards X 10 = 330g from one million cards

330g from one million cards (used) divided by 50% = 115g of gold

take the time to punch out the contact area of 1,000,000 cards, say you had a custom manual punch built ($800.00)
you can punch out (if your real fast) one card every 2 seconds (not including reloading the pile)

30 cards a minute
1,800 cards a hour
14,400 for a 8 hour work day (no lunch, no breaks, no going pee)
936,000 for 65 weekdays at 8 hours a day

i don't know what the average wage there is but unless its real cheap i can't see a clear profit.

if this was ontario canada here is the math: (min hourly wage as of june 1st 2014 $11.00)

$11.00 X 8 hours X 65 days = $5,720 + 4% vacation pay = $228.80 = $5,720 (+ employer contributions) (CAD)

gold price (right now) $1,289.50 Toz (USD) i am not going to convert USD to CAD

115g divided by 31.1 = 11.05466237942122 troy ounces

11.05466237942122 toz X $1,289.50 = $14,254.99 (USD)

$14,254.99 - $5,720.00 = $8,534.99

$8,534.99 - travel - food - customer incentive (? $400.00 + $150.00 + 300.00) ($850.00) = $7,684.99

$7,684.99 - shipping - processing fees - equipment (if needed) - time - long distance phone calls - ? - ? = lets say $5,000.00

$5,000.00 and you make 20% (tops)

$1,000.00 not sure about taxes or other expenses.

this does not the 64,000 cards i left out of the math (just to round it out)

EDIT: please - the $800.00 for the punch machine, i forgot that


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## glondor (May 9, 2014)

With a quick wooden jig, you could run them continuously through a band saw, if the chips are all in the same place. Just stack them edge side down against a properly adjusted fence, have a thin metal curve on the out-feed to separate the waste from the usable parts, 4 runs and you are through. I would think of water cooling the blade somehow, as I am sure the plastic will want to melt. You would have to be mindful of the chip orientation in your stacks.


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## kjavanb123 (May 9, 2014)

All,

Thanks for your input. One way to be assured about any profit, would be to receieve a kg of sample, cut the plastics, market it as scrap, then fire assay the gold plating part to find the gold content and AA ( atomic absorbtion ) for copper. I will be receiving that sample next week. I will do the tests, and post results, so we can plan further procesess.
Labor is cheap here.

Thanks for your responses
Kevin


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## kurtak (May 9, 2014)

spaceships said:


> I really wouldn't recommend factoring a profit from the plastic that you cut from these things.



spaceships

There is actually a fairly good market for plastics (if you have enough volume) I get 19 cents a pound (about 2X the price of tin) for the ABS plastic from scraping electronics so it factors in to the money made - another words - though the plastic its self may not "make a profit" - getting paid for it factors in at the bottom line

Kurt


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## Anonymous (May 9, 2014)

Hi Kurt.

Thanks for the info - just as an FYI I sell my plastics by the bail.


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## kurtak (May 9, 2014)

glondor said:


> With a quick wooden jig, you could run them continuously through a band saw, if the chips are all in the same place. Just stack them edge side down against a properly adjusted fence, have a thin metal curve on the out-feed to separate the waste from the usable parts, 4 runs and you are through. I would think of water cooling the blade somehow, as I am sure the plastic will want to melt. You would have to be mindful of the chip orientation in your stacks.



glondor

if he stack the cards thick enough he should be able to run a fairly to very aggressive blade (which will give him a bit wider saw kerf) with a fairly fast blade speed which means faster feed speed all of which will help cut down on melt down from friction - I could be wrong but I don't think he will need to worry about water cooling

Kurt


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## kjavanb123 (May 9, 2014)

Kurtak,

Considering the volume of cards, the amount of plastic will be huge something around 8 tons, that is gotta cover some of the expenses, so I will definetly look into cutting as much plastic as I can get from the cards.

First thing is to find iut the yield for this time of cards, as far as usage, they get inserted at the pump, so it is very frequently, unlike SIM cards that once inserted they donky usually change them. So I am assuming they might have thicker plating.

Here are some photo,



Regards
Kevin


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## necromancer (May 9, 2014)

think about this band saw idea for a minute........

lots of stacking, lots of cutting & lots of picking out & sorting gold parts.


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## g_axelsson (May 9, 2014)

A wild idea, use a drill press to drill the chip out. Use a jig in the form of a small iron box with a hole on top and bottom where the chip is located and leave the short side open for loading and unloading stacks of 40-50 cards. Pack them tight to get a clean cut and no shavings between the cards. The gold will be in the shavings.

Göran


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## glondor (May 9, 2014)

When you quote the tonnage, impressive amount. By eliminating 90+ % of the plastic from incineration, wow, the savings! If they are metric tonnes, you will save over $10000.00 in incineration fees alone, plus the added value as sale-able plastic scrap. Even @ 5 cents a pound the plastic would let you buy lunch for the workers for a month! 
A quick, rough and dirty calculation says that all cards, placed on edge, in a horizontal stack would be 2 km long! 

Re: incineration. will you be able to claim the ash that goes up the flue and to the bag-house? Is there a way to do this without putting a percentage of gold up the chimney and into the incinerator operators pocket? 
Does any one know the proper procedure to rep something like this? 
Will the incinerator operator allow close scrutiny and possible intrusive reclaim of all material? 

Just a few thoughts.


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## Anonymous (May 9, 2014)

Kevin fair play. If you're talking 8 tonnes of plastics then I appreciate the point about recovering some of your money with the sale of these.


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## kjavanb123 (May 9, 2014)

Spaceship,

I got that number by assuming 5g per card, by cutting 80% of plastic that is 4g of plastics per card, they claim to have 1.7 million cards they dispose, so that is 4 x 1.7 million which is 6.8 tons of plastic which paid up to 10 cents per kg, which brings the total plastic value at 6800 kg x $0.10 which $680.

Glondor,
Incineration these parts I get to have the bag house contents as well as the main incinerated materials, it is done by government itself.

Thanks
Kevin


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## butcher (May 9, 2014)

Build your own card cutting tool, or get a welder friend to help, I will try to describe one idea.
A pipe, the pipe passes through guide bushings, the pipe is also sharpened on one end like a plug cutter, weld a fitting to the pipe end at its side, (so as not to obstruct the openings of the pipe, this fitting fits a hydraulic ram rod ,(a cheap hand pump type like a bottle jack, or hand operated log splitter or an motor operated electric gas hydraulic power pack...), a base frame to hold a long stack of cards, can be welded out of angle iron, as a frame base for the cutting pipe, the pipe cuts through the cards the round gold parts are pushed all the way through the pipe, a base plate at both ends of the frame allow pipe to pass but not the rest of the cards on forward and reverse travel...
A press (geared hand) or hydraulic, using the pipe and similar idea as above.

A lever operated hole punch (like a very large paper punch), the large lever hinged at the back of a metal bench, a base plate holds a stack of cards to be punched in the proper place, again the pipe bit punches out the spot and they pass through the pipe, as the pipe cutting head passes through the stack of cards and out the hole in the base plate, the box that holds the cards also has a hole on top the pipe passes through, so when the lever is lifted the cards are held in place as the pipe cutter is lifted out of the stack of cards, the large lever is hand operated, and has enough of a fulcrum to make it easy on the operator.

Another way, use a table saw and guide, make a few wood boxes to hold a stack of cards, each of these boxes are different sizes to hold the cards where they need to be cut, the boxes slide down the table saws guide rail to cut the plastic from the target material, the remaining cards are moved to the next guide box to make another cut (the boxes are made so the table saws settings,or guide bar does not need readjusting to make the different cuts in the card.

Too bad I cannot post pictures that are in my mind, they would be more simple to understand than my writing.

Removing as much plastic as possible will make recovery easier, safer, more environmentally friendly, and more gold in your pocket.

Incinerating all of that plastic, the toxic fumes, ash, waste... would just cause problems in most any recovery method used, and most likely loss of more gold in the process. Less trash is always better, and if you can make money off the plastic Trash, you may be able to help cover some of the cost of building the tool needed, and some of the labor of cutting the cards.


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## kjavanb123 (May 10, 2014)

Butcher,

Thanks for your tips, I had a very similar method as you mentioned, a pipe squared shpe a little bigger than the size of chip, somehow heat it, and press it down the stack of cards while it is hot, that way all the chips are inside the pipe, and it leaves a hole in the stack of cards.
I talked to them this morning, their paper work will take 10 days to complete, plus they can supple 400,000 cards on monthly basis while this went through. 

Thanks
Kevin


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## Anonymous (May 12, 2014)

Funnily enough I have the same quantity of sim cards arriving next week but still on the reels they were manufactured on.


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## patnor1011 (May 14, 2014)

Whole cards, sim cards or just chip?


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## etack (May 14, 2014)

Why not use a good shear? You should be able to cut off what you want. You should be able to 1000+ at a time if they are all stacked right.

This is an old problem that has been solved already. 

Eric


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## kjavanb123 (May 14, 2014)

Eric,

Thanks for your comments. I will try your methods once I receive the sample which will be after our negotiation with them. But here is a look at inside one card chip. It does not show any gold bonding wire, but the thickness felt very thick, here are some pictures.

Chip was removed from the card, it seemed to take off easily, just push the corner a little and the chip popped out,



I pealed a piece of gold plating, it was gold plated both front and back, it felt like solid gold sheet,



Here is the card after removing the chip, the weight of chipp with plastic underneath of it is 0.1g



I will post update once I receive the aqua regia test on this chip.

Regards
Kevin


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## necromancer (May 14, 2014)

the problem with shearing or punching many at a time is double or triple handling to align all the chips


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## Anonymous (May 15, 2014)

It's not my intention to hijack Kevin's thread but if anyone does have any yield ideas for the below I would be grateful because I have 15Kg of these. I'm good with processing, and yes they have the chips in the back too.

The pic has 180G of product.

edit: There are bonding wires in these too.

Thanks 

Jon


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## patnor1011 (May 16, 2014)

Jon, AP on plating, what will be left must be incinerated, washed and then you will get to bonding wires. 

Kevin, it only feel like solid gold sheet, it is solid copper sheet plated on top. Look for actual wafer inside in centre and there should be 6 bonding wires connecting to it. My picture show how it look like.


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## Anonymous (May 16, 2014)

Thanks Patnor


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## patnor1011 (May 16, 2014)

I did the same material as sample but cant really give you any numbers as it was not exactly as you have there. I mean I had reels with sim cards punched out, yet some reels did have some quantity of sims still attached, so no reels without or reels full, it was mostly punched out say about 80-90% sims gone from reel. Then I had just punched out sims in another batch but some of them were just plated top part, some of them with plastic from card still attached... There is thread link in my first post on this thread, also some bits and pieces of info are in my main thread about IC chips.

Kevin, can you upload background picture your peeled off foil? also rest of card where it was peeled off.


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## kjavanb123 (May 16, 2014)

Patnor1011

Sure thing I will be posting thrm tommorow local times.

Spaceship,
I dont know if this helps, but while I was in Singapor for ewaste consulting, I saw a video of their refinery where they had some stainless steel pot, and the operator put what it seemed like excatly the same materials you have in your picture in the pot and took it out and it was completely stripped from gold, I am very sure now that they used cyanide peroxide treatment for these reels. Presuming you have access to cyanide.

I am expecting some conclusion from Iranian side regarding this fuel card refining this week.


Regards
Kevin


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## Anonymous (May 16, 2014)

Thanks Kevin

Although Patnor is quite correct, I've actually gone straight to AR with these in the past. Yeah I know it has to ingest the copper but it's far quicker than a two step process. I also hate all the messing around picking the gold out of the AP.


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## patnor1011 (May 16, 2014)

Here I would say cyanide can only strip plating the same as AP will do, much faster but it is still only plating. I would not use nitric for this material, or AR as from my experience I know that epoxy holding bonding wires will get affected "gooed" by nitric.
That is why I would use stripping process first then incineration to get wires from inside epoxy (on back side).


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## Anonymous (May 16, 2014)

I hear you Patnor, as in I REALLY hear you, and not just saying it mate.

We've done a few of these of different types and not had the same problem so maybe it's a slightly different material but I'll so a very small test run and if it gums, I'll revert to AP. Thanks for the pointer. It can't hurt to be careful, that's for sure.

Jon


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## rickbb (May 16, 2014)

Wouldn't such large volumes of this kind of material warrant grinding and incineration, (or vise-a-versa), of the whole lot before some kind of leach?

Just asking, I've never done large amounts of any material. Just seems that way it would be more like a gold bearing ore process.


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## Anonymous (May 16, 2014)

To be fair Rick, as Patnor said you need to be sure whether or not the rest of the material will react badly with Nitric and then obviously AR. If not then it's a straightforward process to take the visible gold. The trapped gold connectors are a completely different process but it's a lot easier to do this knowing that the rest of the gold is taken care of.

Jon.


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## kjavanb123 (May 17, 2014)

All,

Here are some photos from the back of pealed gold plating. Gold bonding wires are visible.

Gold plating removed from the plastic part,



The back of removed piece,



Chip after incineration, no smoke at all, maybe it was a tiny sample,



I dissolved the incinerated pieces in AR, and sent it out to be analyzed by a local lab for Cu, and Au. Will post results.

Thanks
Kevin


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## kjavanb123 (May 25, 2014)

All,

An update on fuel card, the guy whom I contacted regarding the cards communicated with me that due to security issues they can't hand me the cards unless it is shredded and grinded, which I requested to send me a sample to investigate and test, I assume for treating that massive amount of cards shredded and grinded best option would be a shaking table or jig, please advise. 
He confirmed 800,000 pieces already processed like that (grinded) and 400,000 more this month.

Regards
Kevin


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## Palladium (May 25, 2014)

Some of my most profitable jobs have been the ones i turned down.
Chasing money will lose you money quick. I turn down just a many jobs as i take most times. Just something to think about.


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## glondor (May 25, 2014)

The grinding of the whole cards really throws a monkey wrench into the whole process. You would need some kind of electrostatic separation to get rid of the bulk waste plastic. Depending on the type of grind done, perhaps some kind of density calibrated flotation would work as well. It did just get more complicated.
If the grind is fine enough, exploring a nitric bath and then an A/R leach may be a viable option now tho. Rinsing or filtering would have to be carefully done. Volumes of solution would be an issue. Palladium has a very valid point.


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## Anonymous (May 25, 2014)

For the yields and work involved I would suggest that this really should be the point of walking away.

Pick your battles Kevin. This one's a load of work for very little return.


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## patnor1011 (May 25, 2014)

I would not attempt any separation of this material. It is close to impossible. Also I would not attempt to treat this material in acid it will be a waste of time and money. The only viable option for this kind of material is total incineration. But to incinerate so much of plastic one really need to have proper equipment in place or face long time in government sponsored accommodation.


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## Smack (May 25, 2014)

Palladium said:


> Some of my most profitable jobs have been the ones i turned down.
> Chasing money will lose you money quick. I turn down just a many jobs as i take most times. Just something to think about.



So much truth in that Palladium, sometimes one CAN try too hard and have too much determination for so little gain. A very wealthy man once told me, "Your better off doing a little work and making good money than breaking your back doing a whole lot of work just to break even".


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## goldenchild (May 26, 2014)

Sounds fishy to me. The information on those cards can easily be destroyed. Shredding the cards pretty much ruined everything. How will you know all the gold is actually there? It's possible that some cards had the "chip" removed and then the non valuable part was shredded and thrown into the lot as filler. Never mind now that you have to deal with the ENTIRE card instead of just the gold part. Walk away!


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## Pantherlikher (May 26, 2014)

I've been following along hoping for the best for you but...

They used a grinder on the cards which means they most likely hit the gold spots. If they even touch the plating, you have 0 gold as it is thin to begin with.

At this point, it is too much work unless free which still might be too much.

Bummer

B.S.


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## kurtak (May 27, 2014)

kjavanb123 said:


> All,
> 
> An update on fuel card, the guy whom I contacted regarding the cards communicated with me that due to security issues they can't hand me the cards unless it is shredded and grinded, which I requested to send me a sample to investigate and test, I assume for treating that massive amount of cards shredded and grinded best option would be a shaking table or jig, please advise.
> He confirmed 800,000 pieces already processed like that (grinded) and 400,000 more this month.
> ...



What a bummer - I would have to agree with the others - its time to walk away - to much plastic which is "ALL" going to have to be incinerated = "HUGE" amount of ash = can't wash ash away without losing gold plating = excessive flux to slag ash off in the smelt + more collector metal to collect from ash = more chem work &/or electrolytic work + lost plastic sales ++++

was really hoping this was going to work out for you Kevin but I really would walk away at this point

Kurt


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## Anonymous (May 27, 2014)

Hopefully he'll take our advice....... 8)


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## kjavanb123 (May 27, 2014)

All,

Thanks all for your great advise. I am not going to pursue this project.

Regards
Kevin


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## Anonymous (May 27, 2014)

Woohoo! Result- good on you Kevin

Jon


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## amfanatic (Jan 31, 2015)

I understand that I am new here and that this is an old post but why not just soak the cards in acetone? The Plastic just swells up and pushes the gold and chip right off...


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## kjavanb123 (Jan 31, 2015)

Welcome to he forum. I think using hot lye solution is what has been used on smaller quantities of sim cards, but this post was about over a million pieces of simcards which is shredded and dumped into the landfilled.

Regards
Kevin


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## necromancer (Jan 31, 2015)

amfanatic said:


> I understand that I am new here and that this is an old post but why not just soak the cards in acetone? The Plastic just swells up and pushes the gold and chip right off...



by doing some rough math you will get a sense of the volume of 1,000,000 sim cards.


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## canedane (Jan 31, 2015)

amfanatic said:


> I understand that I am new here and that this is an old post but why not just soak the cards in acetone? The Plastic just swells up and pushes the gold and chip right off...


I have try that, and it is possible with the pvc based cards.I havent try with the other plastic type there is used at cards.
But it is a mess and it is nessesarey with two or three soaks in clean acetone to remove all the pvc.


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## Palladium (Jan 31, 2015)

Acetone cost a whole lot more than acid or naoh and it explosive on top of that.


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