# Refining gold - be a millionaire?



## vingar (May 4, 2013)

Hi everyone
I'm interested in refining gold on a big scale. My first question is about equipment to done this, where I can buy such. I find one company named emakmakina.com and they have e-waste recycling system. Do you know anything about this details god bad company, price etc.
Second thing is profit from that emakmakina have you tube movie with info that I can refine about 560 gram of pure gold from motherboard scrap is true?
How much refineries earn profit are equal to investment ( i mean I buy crap for 1000 Euro and after refining get gold with value of 2000 euro)?
I'm trading electronic waste for three years and sold electronic scrap in following rates(per 1 kilogram):
1. Motherboard new about 5,5 euro
2. Motherboard old 7,70 euro
3. Fiber/plastic CPU 42 euro
4. Black intel or ceramic amd with steel plate 75 euro
5. Ceramic Intel/amd 85 euro
6. Intel up to 486 180 euro
7. Ceramic with goldcap 150 euro
8. Ram gold/slot cpu 24 euro
9. Ram silver 11 euro


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## squarecoinman (May 4, 2013)

vingar said:


> Hi everyone
> I'm interested in refining gold on a big scale. My first question is about equipment to done this, where I can buy such. I find one company named emakmakina.com and they have e-waste recycling system. Do you know anything about this details god bad company, price etc.
> Second thing is profit from that emakmakina have you tube movie with info that I can refine about 560 gram of pure gold from motherboard scrap is true?
> How much refineries earn profit are equal to investment ( i mean I buy crap for 1000 Euro and after refining get gold with value of 2000 euro)?
> ...




Hi Vingar welcome to the forum
You have many questions and they are not complete.

if you want refining equipment, use google search emakmakina is a Turkish company, but there are others.
I have no idea if it is a good or bad company.
You ask if one can get 560 gram pure gold from motherboards, well it depends on how many kilo motherboards you begin with. Do they say how many kilo motherboards they use to make 560 gram pure gold ? 

return of investment depends on many things, your buying price for scrap, the quality of the scrap, labor cost and the cost of running ( chemicals etc ) as well as the gold price. 


Currently you sell about 47 RAM blocks for 24 Euro, and make a small profit on that, If you would process the RAM blocks your self you may get a yield just under 1 gram 
sometimes more sometimes less, but for now we will say you can make 1 gram. and can sell that for 34 Euro, so your potential profit would be 10 euro, but the question is how much environmental tax will you have to pay, how much in wages, how much for your investment, how much in chemicals and how much in electricity, how much in insurance, how much for training your people to handle the machines. And last but not least how much to get rid of your waste. 


on the webside of emakina they have references ( other companies that use the system, if you are serious and have the money, you should contact them and visit a plant )
ask if you can stay a day or 2 or higher somebody to do that for you 


scm


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## patnor1011 (May 5, 2013)

vingar said:


> Hi everyone
> I'm interested in refining gold on a big scale. My first question is about equipment to done this, where I can buy such. I find one company named emakmakina.com and they have e-waste recycling system. Do you know anything about this details god bad company, price etc.
> Second thing is profit from that emakmakina have you tube movie with info that I can refine about 560 gram of pure gold from motherboard scrap is true?
> How much refineries earn profit are equal to investment ( i mean I buy crap for 1000 Euro and after refining get gold with value of 2000 euro)?
> ...



Prices you quoted here are on higher end, you are lucky to receive so good payment for your material. 
I would say that setting up refining place on big scale in eu will cost many hundred thousands of euro to start with.


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## solar_plasma (May 5, 2013)

> are on higher end



Quite normal prices at german refineries. You can even send small amounts with the post or parcel service. And I guess you need large scale financial capital and good connections to be able to compete. In fact I'm pretty sure the cake is already proportioned by the big market forces.

Just two examples:
highest price as far as I know: http://www.computerplatinen.de/elektronik-recycling-preise/schrott-computer-platinen.php
very wellknown: http://www.scheideanstalt.de/recycling/elektronikschrott/elektroschrott-preise-und-sortierkriten/


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## patnor1011 (May 5, 2013)

I was comparing that to wha boys get in USA and we over here on islands. It is less than german companies pay.

I do have bad feeling when I see stuff like: gold, motherboards, wonder emakmakina, refining, and questions about profit of refineries. 
Do not take me wrong, in this times of global warming craze and enormously empowered and bureaucratic governments and zillions agencies hell bent on protecting us from ourselves all this is just a dream (gold fever dream)...

It is going to be very hard if totally impossible to wrestle in in this field. Pie is baked and divided already. There are some occasional crumble left on table for us small guys but that cost something too.

I do refine on small scale, more like a hobby and if I just count what I have invested in safety, consumables and hardware raises hair on my head. I cant even imagine cost of setting up small scale refining operation and paperwork involved.

I do not want to discourage anybody from pursuing their dream. Go for it but do have it planned to the last detail. Do have alternative plan and do not invest all your life savings. Be prepared for fail and strong enough to start again with something else.


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## vingar (May 7, 2013)

squarecoinman said:


> If you want refining equipment, use google search emakmakina is a Turkish company, but there are others.


Any example I have no luck to find any another company.


squarecoinman said:


> You ask if one can get 560 gram pure gold from motherboards, well it depends on how many kilo motherboards you begin with. Do they say how many kilo motherboards they use to make 560 gram pure gold ?


My mistake I'm thinking about 1000kg, but if its true, 560 gram is about 17 ounce and value of it is for today is about 24 000 dollars so profit is big.



squarecoinman said:


> on the webside of emakina they have references ( other companies that use the system, if you are serious and have the money, you should contact them and visit a plant )
> ask if you can stay a day or 2 or higher somebody to do that for you


I'm contacted with them but e-waste recycling is quite new machine in they offer. Probably i will visit their plant in June if they agree.


I know that such installation won't cost 5 euro, already I have installation to extract copper from wires and it's cost as I remember about 50-60 thousand euro. I have price list from emakmakina and whole line cost about 450 000 dollars, only this part to extract gold cos 150 000 dollars.



patnor1011 said:


> I do not want to discourage anybody from pursuing their dream. Go for it but do have it planned to the last detail. Do have alternative plan and do not invest all your life savings. Be prepared for fail and strong enough to start again with something else.


I know what you mean I buy property and open drugstore and I haven't got any profit from it but I don't loose any so it's not so bad situation.
I trade scrap copper, brass, steel, other for 10 years an I can wait for profits, because my scrap company prosper pretty well.


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## squarecoinman (May 7, 2013)

http://www.swissrtec.ch/html/03_04_refining.html

http://goldmachinery.com/machinery/category/gold-refining

1000 Kilo Motherboards is about 2220, that could give 560 gram gold, sometimes a little more.


Since you are already in this field, it sounds like a interesting plan

kind regards squarecoinman


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## skippy (May 7, 2013)

I've never had this stuff refined but as I recall Samuel was saying 250-350 grams per tonne is typical.
560 sounds way high.



squarecoinman said:


> http://www.swissrtec.ch/html/03_04_refining.html
> 
> http://goldmachinery.com/machinery/category/gold-refining
> 
> ...


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## solar_plasma (May 7, 2013)

http://www.aurubis.com/en/our-business/raw-materials/

this one is the biggest copper refinery in germany, maybe in europe. As far as I believe to know they are processing e-scrap together with their copper ore and gain the PMs by electrowinning. On their webside I could not find informations about their processes. So if you have that much copper, maybe it could be something for you to produce electolyte copper and you would gain the PMs as a by-product.


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## skippy (May 8, 2013)

Has anybody here sold copper ingots with PMs in them? There are certain things where I think it might be better than putzing around trying to separate the metals myself. For instance gold filled, silver plated copper and metallics from circuit boards all might be good candidates. Any leads in Ontario, Quebec, or Midwest or NE US would be cool.


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## reuban1973 (Jun 2, 2013)

So your saying 5tonne of mother boards should be a kg of gold ?


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## patnor1011 (Jun 2, 2013)

It is quite possible to get to that amount. However it depend on what is in a mix. Difference may be significant.


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## kurt (Jun 2, 2013)

reuban1973 said:


> So your saying 5tonne of mother boards should be a kg of gold ?



It depends on the "type" of boards - if you had "nothing" but a ton of the newer china boards your yeald is going to be down around 5 ozt per ton (plus or minus depending on how/where processed) if they were all P4 boards the yeald would be a bit higher - if they were all the older large socket boards the yeald would be even higher - if they are a mixed lot the yeald would depend on the mix

There is "no way" to put a number on the expected yeald of a ton of ciruit boards unless that ton of boards happens to be a ton of all "exactly" the same boards

That means every board in the ton of boards would have to come out of computers all of the same make, model & year of manufacture to put a real number on the expected yeald of the ton

If you had a ton of nothing but china boards yeald would be around 5 ozt/ton 

If you had a ton of nothing but 386/486 ceramic CPUs yeald would be 130 - 150 ozt/ton

If the ton is a mix your yeald will be "anything" between those numbers - depending on the mix

The best load I have sent in for processing returned 9.54 ozt/ton (hads a lot of telcom & server boards in that load) --- the worst load I sent in retuned 4.83 ozt/ton (had a lot of cable box, fingerless cards & other lower grade green boards in that load)

I have sent 4 loads in now that I have recieved a retun on (& I have a 5th load in waiting for the return) & the average return on all 4 loads works out to 6.39 ozt/ton 

So as you can see - there is no set - "expect this much" from a ton of boards (look at my high return & my low return)

Kurt


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## artart47 (Jun 2, 2013)

Hi Vingar!
You are already set up to process copper and other base metal? If it were me, I might think about taking a first step and see what profit comes back and then I could take the next step with more information.
Instead of spending a hundred thousand euros or equipment in the begining, I would invest in a set up to incinerate the e-scrap, burn out the carbon and then you could find some people here on the forum and others who could chemically refine the ash after processing it for copper and see what kind of returns you get in precious metals and base metals.
It would give you great education in all the ways to treat it, and which works best for your scrap. I think In a year of doing that you would be educated in what equipment you should buy to start refining it yourself. you could buy eqipment now and find that it wasen"t the best choise later.
Good luck and keep us informed on your progress.
artart47


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## kurt (Jun 2, 2013)

artart47 said:


> Hi Vingar!
> chemically refine the ash after processing it for copper" - artart47



Art - it doesn't work that way - I believe Vingar is talking large volume e-scrap & if he was/is going to set up to incinerate large volume whole boards he also would need to set up to do smelting to recover the metals from the ash werein the copper acts as the collector metal for the PMs - after smelting - the dore bar - which is mostly copper is processed - first for the copper - then for the PMs

So if he is going to incinerate - he may as well smelt --- then he can ether send that out for refining - or set up to do it himself

leaching ash may work fine for something like small lot "chips only" processing - but it does not work on large volume "whole" boards --- you would need huge reaction vessels with huge volumes of chemicals with huge filter press filtering & you would create huge volumes of waste 

Thats why large volums of boards are sent to "smelters" for processing & why "refiners" don't process "whole boards"

Kurt


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## reuban1973 (Jun 3, 2013)

It is a hard one ...
only worth while if you receive the boards for free ..
Worth looking at though .they say there is a fee to process per kg .
and then there is shipping ..
I sell my boards as we don't have a refinery here .
get around 6k per tonne of boards ,So not sure if it is worth while on the boards ..
bout 36oz per kg 
server boards roughly 9oz that 45oz meet have a look at this closer to the end of the year ..
Still have to make money to keep the company running HHMM.


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## drlakic (Mar 21, 2014)

solar_plasma said:


> > are on higher end
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Since you are from Germany this link might help you, if you haven't seen them already. These are by far the best prices I have found!

http://www.meisterjahn-gmbh.de/85


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## Anonymous (Mar 23, 2014)

Unless I'm reading it wrong cmtrade's prices are from 2012?


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## necromancer (Mar 23, 2014)

anyone want to list honest ewaste buyers in the toronto canada area ??

always looking for new buyers, my old buyer has no honest bones left, just greed, which is going to hurt his business by chasing customers away


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## drlakic (Mar 26, 2014)

spaceships said:


> Unless I'm reading it wrong cmtrade's prices are from 2012?



You are right. Thanks for correction. I removed the link.


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## souvage (Mar 3, 2015)

vingar said:


> squarecoinman said:
> 
> 
> > If you want refining equipment, use google search emakmakina is a Turkish company, but there are others.
> ...




Hi, I have visited this company in Istanbul, spent three day with them, but I also met a German company at the Istanbul Jewelry show visited the company, spend 2weeks with them and have done some good experiments with their maschines.
safety, ease to use and not expensive. The company is call During GmbH, and the owner is Denis. 
I live in Frankfurt city and perform some experiments in my Lab. as a beginnner, there are ways to buy scraps very cheap.
Let me know if you have any oter questions.
Souvage


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