# Is this a good idea?



## big red 211 (Jan 9, 2010)

Well I'm really new to this, actually I've just been collecting so far and just now started stripping the components down to get the circuit boards out. After reading TONS of posts on here I was thinking the incineration process would work best for me since I already have a cutting torch. So I was thinking that in order to reduce the time the cutting torch is on I could build a small bonfire in a 55gal drum, put a metal grate were the flame (wood burning) will be and simply drop the boards in a few at a time. Then hopefully that will burn off/reduce some/all of the non metals. Then throw everything in the bottom of the 55gal drum into a water bucket, let it sit for a day or so. Stirring it from time to time. And removing the ash/wood/anything else off the top of the bucket. And finally move onto incinerating everything left or even using acid to seperate all the metals.

My only reason for doing all that is to save money in the long run. I'd like to process the entire boards if at all possible. That whole process will cost me nothing until I have to get out the cutting torch or acid. I'm pretty sure that my ability to continue to make decisions in my marriage will be determined by my ability to actually get something out of all of this. :lol:


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## Anonymous (Jan 9, 2010)

lots of bad fumes, incinerators use force air and a fume washing to do this. Most of the metals on the board are copper, tin, lead.

Jim


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## butcher (Jan 9, 2010)

Big Red,say's : 
"I'm pretty sure that my ability to continue to make decisions in my marriage will be determined by my ability to actually get something out of all of this."

Red besides toxicity, and other issues, you will be left with a mix of metals that will be very hard for someone new to this to seperate,(not counting the extra cost on chemicals to remove all the base metals) also your waste stream of waste will be much greater, and even if you had all the chemistry down pat, you would most likely spend more time and trouble than it would take to seperate them physically before you start recovering the metals with acids, if marriage involved, stick with the proven methods, dont spend money on E junk, make as much of the chemicals you can, you can make a profit from E-junk, but it will not be much, and it is also alot easier to loose money on it. Once the lil woman can hold some gold in her hand she will settle down, (especially if she's waiting for that 50th anniversary wedding ring to get made). there are better sources of material than e-scrap, but with any of this you have to be very careful about what you pay,also ebay eats up potiential profit.


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## big red 211 (Jan 10, 2010)

Ok, so after I cut off the fingers, CPUs if they have one and remove any aluminum cooling fins... what would be the best way to process the rest of the board? Or should I just not mess with it? One thing I was hoping I could do is extract the silver from the solder since every board has solder... I figured it might ad up to something?


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## patnor1011 (Jan 10, 2010)

Not worth health hazard when doing without proper equipment and technology. Too many people on waiting list for lungs transplant....


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## Anonymous (Jan 10, 2010)

Incinerating whole boards in a 45 gallon drum, sure why not light up two, two at a time saves time.

Any domestic or wildlife in the area would be at risk not to mention your family and neighbors, if you pulled this stunt off in my neighborhood I would be on the telephone so fast to report you to the authorities. 

What you have proposed is insane, also you might consider marriage counseling. It worked for me once.


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## big red 211 (Jan 10, 2010)

haha, the marriage thing was a joke. We have a great relationship. She just thinks it's dumb, that's all.

How's what I was asking going to let off any more fumes than someone incenerating them in a furnace? I guess I missed that in my searching.


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## goldsilverpro (Jan 10, 2010)

Since you're going to persist in this, to answer your original question, it's a terrible stupid idea. Listen to your wife.

I don't think you'll find that anyone on the forum has suggested the incineration of boards in a furnace, unless you have an exhaust and a baghouse. It would be the stupid sort of thing you would only do once, for several reasons. You obviously haven't burned any and dealt with the copious amount of stinking, very toxic, very heavy, black smoke.

A long time ago, I was with a guy that put a couple of trays (half a 55 gal steel drum, cut lengthwise, with short legs welded on it) of boards in a big box-shaped furnace with gas flames on the boards - no baghouse. He did this about midnight in an industrial area of a city that I won't mention. We left and when we returned, about an hour later, the very visible smoke covered at least a 15-20 square block area - no exaggeration. There was a inverse temperature gradient weather condition and the smoke clung near the ground. Luckily for him (and probably me - even though it was his company and his deal, I was with him), no one called the cops. People probably thought it was fog.

Burning the insulation off of wire pales in comparison with burning circuit boards, especially the older phenolic type. I might also mention that arsenic and antimony are used as flame retardants in many boards.


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## butcher (Jan 10, 2010)

some parts on circuit boards have resale value, capacitors, resistors, transformers, diodes, intregrated circuits and so on, it take's a little time to desolder them, but the parts will pile up fast. also there are dealers who will buy the circuit boards. 
what little silver or metals after you pull what you want off would cost you much more than you would get in time and money, here your wife is right tell her she was, about that part, make her happy, then take the fingers, and high grade junk and learn to refine a nice gold button, show your wife this little button, make her happy, and show her you were right, study this forum well and you can learn to get nice gold, jump into something you do not understand and you will have trouble, 

I think you misunderstood our term Inceneration, we are talking about powders or metals, getting them red hot to burn off minute amounts of organics, and to drive the acid anion off, and to oxidize base metals,

burning tires is a bad idea, circuit boards are like burning tires,and worse, many toxic metals,and epoxy's, they will not burn hot enough and will put many deadly fumes into the air and the surrounding soils, and waters.

now study up so you can show your wife that fine gold.


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## big red 211 (Jan 11, 2010)

Sounds good. Thanks! I'll go back to my 'reading but not posting' stage now.


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## nickvc (Jan 11, 2010)

Big Red im pleased you listened to the members comments,many new members seem to think that adverse comments are a personal attack but this is an open forum and the health and safety of members is paramount as is the impact on the locality in which you and others live.Read and learn start with Hoke which is available as a free download and check out Laser Steves site, if you get lost post questions, someone will help.The accumulated knowledge on this forum is staggering and is free if you do your part and learn the basics.That first gold button is near.


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## plamenppp (Jan 11, 2010)

gustavus said:


> Incinerating whole boards in a 45 gallon drum, sure why not light up two, two at a time saves time.
> 
> Any domestic or wildlife in the area would be at risk not to mention your family and neighbors, if you pulled this stunt off in my neighborhood I would be on the telephone so fast to report you to the authorities.
> 
> What you have proposed is insane, also you might consider marriage counseling. It worked for me once.




big red 211, I've heard for a guy whose nickname is "the magic". His neighbours' trees do not have leaves because of fumes (red, green, yellow, black). By the way, he has started with the Pravetz 8 computers. And as long as I know he has no teeth. Burning is dangerous thing - avoid it when you can. Water will not wash away all the ash and other trash. When you work - work clean and safety and mostly imperceptibly.


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## big red 211 (Jan 11, 2010)

nickvc said:


> Big Red im pleased you listened to the members comments


Yea, I tend to listen to people when they tell me something. Not all of it was in the nicest way possible but oh well. I asked for advice and I got it.


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## butcher (Jan 11, 2010)

Red I really do not believe anyone had anything but good intentions and willingness to help, maybe they spoke to try and get yer attention, with your health in mind, as they have an understanding of what dangers are involved, kinda like if you seen someone on the edge of a cliff and you yell STOP, the guy backs up and say why did you yell at me? don't you like me? I thought we were friends?


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## Anonymous (Jan 11, 2010)

big red 211 said:


> nickvc said:
> 
> 
> > Big Red im pleased you listened to the members comments
> ...



You struck me as the kind of guy who needed a good slap on the side of the head to listen up, refining is of course accomplished by reduction. Which I'm sure your aware of but show a slight of laziness expecting to take the easy route by incinerating everything.

What you're going to end up with is a pile of burnt rubbish that is impossible to sort, and pile of toxic smoke which is oily as one member pointed out and does not readily wash off.

I started in the scrap business at 19 years of age, one of my customers asked me to burn some telephone comm copper wire for him, enough to fill one gravel truck and a 3 ton flat deck. Took the wire up to an Indian reserve and lit her up, once that pile started to burn there was no way of putting it out and believe me I would have had I the water on hand.

The huge billow of smoke wafted towards town, a helicopter did a fly over in the first daylight of morning, lucky for us Environment was not a big issue back in them days. All this for $0.10 a pound returned wire to the dealer.

Yea money has a strange effect on man, back in those days my take $1800.00 was big money for a nights work, I did several more burns for that same dealer before calling it quits.

And this was after I had learned to steal from him without his noticing, by bring a load of water on the flat deck we could douse the heat from the large pile stopping oxidation allowing some theft.

I remember the first time we did this, sitting in the dealers office waiting for the final figures for payment on a returned load, when he frowned and looked at me and said Hmm thats strange. 

I thought the fox got caught in the chicken coop when he says 76% back, thats the best I've had so far.

So who ever was doing the burning before I came along was dipping heavy into the kitty.

From the burning wire an oily residue would cling to your skin not to mention what went into my lungs, and the gravel truck box was fast rusting out after hauling this burnt wire.

My father bought the gravel truck for me in hopes that it would make an honest hard working man of me, Yes I was a paid up ,member of Local 213 for many years, installed a hydraulic winch on the underside of the gravel box and would gather any abandoned vehicles left on a construction site I would be working on.

After the work day finished I would drop my cars outside the scrap yard with my initials painted on, they would send me a check in the mail.

Found that I enjoyed the independence of being self employed and went into scrap 100 percent. No regrets.

Best Regards
G


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## big red 211 (Jan 13, 2010)

butcher said:


> some parts on circuit boards have resale value, capacitors, resistors, transformers, diodes, intregrated circuits and so on, it take's a little time to desolder them, but the parts will pile up fast. also there are dealers who will buy the circuit boards.


Who do you sell all that to? Ebay doesn't really seem to like it would be the best place for that?


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## butcher (Jan 13, 2010)

You will find them on ebay, (search ebay for resistor, transformer, or capacitor it may be under industrial) I do alot of electronics, so I do not sell my parts, there are also some collectors who buy certain old integrated circuits and some pay thousands of dollars for certain rare chips, there are hamfests in most areas, a gathering of ham radio and electronic buffs, that would be a good place to take them, they buy and sell and trade, also the used parts are sold by advertisments in electronic magazines, also place's like surplus (I get there flyer but cant recall there name), depending on your area you may even be able to sell them in a garage sell, or advertise in craigs list, most areas have radio shack but they, have a pizz poor selection of electronic parts nowaday's, they are going into telephones and computers and away from electronics, and people who do electronics like to keep a stock bin to work from, there bins are treasures to them, and with electronics going more towards SMD devices and computer controlled, these older components will be increasingly hard to find, sometimes when repairing something it may have a part in it you need, and the part is not made anymore, that can make that part valuble, even used, especially if you will have to replace a large expensive piece of equiptment for lack of availability of that part, you may not have high dollar components but why throw away something you may be able to sell or trade, or you can give away to someone who can use it? you may even find a local electronic repair shop make a deal with them see if they will trade thier unwanted old circuit boards for a nice neatly sorted selection of reistors capacitors diodes transistors and so on.


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## joem (Jul 26, 2010)

Darwin Award...


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## plasmasmelter (Sep 9, 2010)

Hi Red,

I spoke with my partner about processing escrap and pcb and he indicated
that there is alot of chlorine gas that is released and could be deadly. Of course,
any gases created would need to be scrubbed clean according to EPA. Good luck!

PS


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## Anonymous (Sep 15, 2010)

to recover:
GOLD ; use a pair of tin snips and cut off or around any part that is gold plated. ALUMINUM; unscrew / unsolder all heat sinks ,a few are iron or even copper . COPPER; most parts attached to a heat sink contiain copper and transformers and coils and wires cut off with wire cutters also any part with a metal tab. Mecanical separation and sale of different metals helps pay for the cost of gold recovery. A good example is; copper mines produce the most gold in the united states as a by product. Burnig has been used on some gold scarp to make an oxide coating on base metals so the gold does not replate on it and stays in solution.


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