# concentrates. What to do



## Rougemillenial (Mar 13, 2017)

I have a rather large quantity of powder/ shards from over 4 metric tons of circuit boards. It's composed of a ghastly mixture of various organic compounds, ceramics, copper, PM's, some base metals, some salts, sands, aluminum oxides, and god knows what else. the vast majority of possible precious metals are present including gold, all PGM's, and silver. the quantity of these concentrates is about 4-5 gallons and weighs so much that lifting it is essentially impossible without help, so it's certainly over 100lbs. I've repeatably washed this material with Hydrochloric acid, AP, sulfuric, nitric acid, acetic acid, lye, and burned it with a anaerobic gasifier setup though it was very difficult to keep the temp up. The solution was either treated with washing soda or aluminum from foil or heat sinks, the resulting sludge was dried and kept since I don't have a filtration setup so gold and other stuff are present. One, how do I get the organics stripped efficiently? Two, how do I go about separating the ceramics. Three, how do I determine what else is in it. Note, The nitric acid was made in situ by mixing sulfuric acid, 60% H2O2, and KNO3 so an enormous amount of sulfate ions are present.


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