# Toxic smoke control in inceneration



## kjavanb123 (Nov 16, 2013)

All,

After reading posts on pyrolysis and incineration, I had an idea, please advise, a sealed steel bucket, filled with shredded circuit boards, the fire like shower head spurts from the above to the circuit boards, then ant smokes would come up you be burned off directly by the flame above?

Thanks
Kevin


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## wrmahaff (Nov 16, 2013)

I wasn't going to chime in on any of your threads didn't want to be the debbie downer...

But you might want to be careful with everything that you're doing. I don't think Uncle Sam really cares about small scale backyard kinda stuff, but when you start incinerating large volumes, the EPA might come knocking. I know there are tons of restrictions/Air Quality issues with the big refineries here in the states.


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## NoIdea (Nov 16, 2013)

Morning, personally I'd put the holes in the bottom, any nasty halogens will want to react with the ash, the extra heat derived from the combustion of the off gases will speed things along, and it tends to burn cleaner.

Cheers

Deano


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## patnor1011 (Nov 19, 2013)

Kevin, will you be so kind and keep everything in *ONE* thread? What is the purpose of making one new thread every day about pretty much the same thing other than cluttering forum and making it hard to navigate?


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## Pantherlikher (Nov 19, 2013)

Ouch... my eyes hurt from that yell.!!!
But hopefully well worth it.
In starting yet another post, you've added to the clutter of the forum. And, you will probably realize you are trying to reinvent the wheel here.
There are many posts on this subject. As well as other forums filled with ideas.
Please stop typing and do some research on the subject.

Thank you

B.S.


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## bigjohn (Nov 19, 2013)

As said above. I wouldn't be smelting pcbs. I've read most of your post and you state your not a home refiner. Your gonna have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to process pcbs.. There is a reason all this scrap is sent to third world countries.The EPA is strict on this kind of pollution. Sorry if I come across rude or harsh but if I lived near you and knew you were smelting pcbs. I'd call the EPA on you.


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## niteliteone (Nov 19, 2013)

bigjohn said:


> As said above. I wouldn't be smelting pcbs. I've read most of your post and you state your not a home refiner. Your gonna have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to process pcbs.. There is a reason all this scrap is sent to third world countries.The EPA is strict on this kind of pollution. Sorry if I come across rude or harsh but if I lived near you and knew you were smelting pcbs. I'd call the EPA on you.


Those ""tens of thousands of dollars"" won't even pay for the EPA's permits, let alone purchase any equipment.

I don't know where you live, but here in California the EPA's fine for incinerating with-out a permit starts around $104,000.00 for this type of activity, plus what ever else they can nail you with. That was 25 years ago when we were caught burning copper wire. I'm sure it hasn't gone down since then. :shock:


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## patnor1011 (Nov 19, 2013)

This is why I am frustrated with him creating whole bunch of threads, things are being lost in many of them and sadly he do not realize that it is bad mainly for him. He said in some of his many threads that he is in some of the middle eastern country. If that would be in one original thread about his refining adventure there would be less answers about EPA (which are warranted as burning motherboards is dangerous procedure). 
Tomorrow there will be another new thread Kevin will post with yet another question but related to previous one or to what he is trying to do. I think that it would be good idea if some moderator decide to merge all his threads in one as it was done with some other topics.


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## bigjohn (Nov 19, 2013)

Niteliteone
Thats my whole point. This is a impossible venture unless hes got tons of cash to throw at. Being a electrician I have stripped my fare share of copper wire. Never burned it, all stripped by hand.


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## bigjohn (Nov 19, 2013)

patnor1011 said:


> This is why I am frustrated with him creating whole bunch of threads, things are being lost in many of them and sadly he do not realize that it is bad mainly for him. He said in some of his many threads that he is in some of the middle eastern country. If that would be in one original thread about his refining adventure there would be less answers about EPA (which are warranted as burning motherboards is dangerous procedure).
> Tomorrow there will be another new thread Kevin will post with yet another question but related to previous one or to what he is trying to do. I think that it would be good idea if some moderator decide to merge all his threads in one as it was done with some other topics.



His location shows as USA. Not sure if thats accurate or not.


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## Anonymous (Nov 20, 2013)

I'm glad you guys have posted like this. It echoes my own thoughts. I've been wondering for a while about all these threads and the reality of how much money is being sunk into it to make it work. There either has to be a huge amount of cash needed to do it properly and legally, or it's out in some yard in India or another unregulated country. And I'm not seeing any posts about the legal side of what's going on.

Also as has been pointed out before, he's trying to reinvent the wheel and chopping and changing from one idea to another without any forward planning whatsoever. One stage done, then how do I do the next bit? It would be great to get them all into one thread. It would equally be great if Kevin actually took any-body's advice that didn't say what he wanted to hear. 

To Kevin, please excuse the bluntness but it becomes very hard to help sometimes when you make it difficult to understand what's really going on.

My 2 cents worth. 

Jon


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 23, 2013)

Wow,

Fellows, I thought this category is about fume control, hence my topic here. I am a business owner in Dubai, not a very restrict EPA here and no smelting company either. So I was looking for a. Home made after burner to smelt 1 metric ton of pcbs per day.

Regards
Kevin


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## g_axelsson (Nov 23, 2013)

What do you expect, your profile says your location is in USA, of course you will get answers as if you were operating in USA. :!: 

Göran


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## Smack (Nov 23, 2013)

You should edit your profile Kevin


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 23, 2013)

Hmm,

I will take care of my profile, but back to the topic, I found two posts regarding using medical incinerator for pcb incineration,but all need after burner, so I will just look into that.

Regards,
Kevin


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## butcher (Nov 23, 2013)

I believe the little bit of information we put in our profile is important.
Using deception in a profile, can lead others to see you as deceptive, even if you are an honest person.
Your location, can help others to understand where you are from, (It does not have to give your exact location), this can be helpful to others, like understand if English is not your language, it can also be helpful to others who wish to give you answers which may be different in different parts of the world.


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 23, 2013)

Butcher,

I did update my profile. Can medical incinerator work?


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## philddreamer (Nov 23, 2013)

Try doing some reading here:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=5418&p=46405&hilit=incinerator#p46396

I've been reading it and other posts because I'll be starting to build an incinerator very soon.

Take care!
Phil


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 24, 2013)

Phil,

I have read that post, sadly, it didnt conclude, so I sent a sample of shredded boards to this local company that make waste incinerator it has after burner, I will post the result.

Regrads
Kevin


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## kjavanb123 (Dec 4, 2013)

All,

Today I used a waste incinerator unit incinerate 2 kg of shredded electronics boards, no smoke came out, and after 30 ,inutes of burning, all ICs turned to white color, and rest of boards were light gray in color.

The unit,



And this was boards after 20 mintues into the burning,



Regards,
Kevin


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## Anonymous (Dec 5, 2013)

Kevin

No smoke came out? Where did it go? Have you got a fume extraction system on the back of it?


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## butcher (Dec 5, 2013)

Smoke is incomplete combustion of material, if material or gases produced from incineration are more completely combusted there will be very little smoke, for this normally the temperature and correct air is needed for complete combustion, after burners are normally used to re-burn the the smoke from the initial combustion process, to achieve a more complete combustion.

A waste incinerator can be designed to give as complete a combustion as possible in the initial combustion chamber with the proper air fuel ratio, then the after burner will re-burn the the flue gases (smoke) of the main combustion chamber to give a more complete combustion of these gases.


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## kjavanb123 (Dec 5, 2013)

If you look at the unit picture on top of it is the after burner unit reaching 1200c temperature, the owner turned it on before the incineratin burning unit, so when I put the shredded boards inside the unit, very little smokes came out, but in 10 mintues the guy opened the gate just a little it was filled with black smoke, so it was obvious sfter burner which is located right above the main burner does it job, later on he told me the damper thst would allow the exit of smokes from after burner was fully open, he is going to close it half way so the retaining time in the after burner will be more than 2 seconds, that should take care of the tiny amount of smokes that came out at very first.
He is going to do some test and change some settings iwht this unit so it will completely eliminate any visible smokes, then check the exit pipe with a friend who works with EPA officer to measure the junk that come out of the hood.
The cost for it is USD 5000. 


Best regards,
Kevin


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## Anonymous (Dec 5, 2013)

I'm sorry please allow me to rephrase the question.I meant waste product in the air not smoke. i.e the toxic product of the incineration whether visible or not.

I see that it's already mostly been answered as "straight out the pipe."


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## butcher (Dec 5, 2013)

complete combustion will not remove all of the toxic product, but will lower them to a much safer value, with most of the worst toxins incinerated in the combustion process, there will be some fly-ash in the flue exhaust, which could consist of toxic metal in the dust particles.


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## Anonymous (Dec 5, 2013)

Yeah I'm with you here Butcher. That incinerator was working in a built up area, and all the questions on the multiple threads have been based around tonnes of product per day.

Hence my question, because it had come across (not from you) that if there was no smoke it was ok. Which we know it isn't.


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## kjavanb123 (Dec 6, 2013)

This is an IC in the bunch I incinerated using the waste incinerator, please advise if this is complete incineration.




Thanks
Kevin


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## butcher (Dec 6, 2013)

Does it smoke more when you heat it with a torch, basically once all carbonous material is burnt to ash it can be considered completely incinerated.


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## rickbb (Dec 6, 2013)

And if I'm not mistaken it should easily crush to powder when completed.



_Edited to correct spelling._


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## kjavanb123 (Dec 7, 2013)

butcher said:


> Does it smoke more when you heat it with a torch, basically once all carbonous material is burnt to ash it can be considered completely incinerated.



I have not tried your method of using a torch on ashes, but all ICs have turned to white grayish color. The owner of incinerator told me burning for 50 minutes would eliminate 96% of carbons in the materials.

Regards
Kevin


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## kjavanb123 (Dec 7, 2013)

rickbb said:


> And if I'm not mistaken it should easily crush to powder when completed.
> 
> 
> 
> _Edited to correct spelling._



It still partially elastic and wont crush since I cooked it for 20 mintues or so, They should be in there at least for 50 mintues at 900c.

Regards
Kevin


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## butcher (Dec 7, 2013)

Depending on the material it may take longer to cook it completely thick dense material may cook on the outside and still be uncooked on the inside. 

The Integrated Circuit chip in your hand looks cooked to ash on the outside, some of these are a dense plastic type material, I cannot tell from here by the picture if it is cooked all the way through, try crushing it and heat it with a torch, if it is hard to crush and the powder smokes under the flame of the torch, you have the answer. 
Ceramic can be hard to crush, and is hard, but it will not smoke or burn when heated giving off smoke unless carbonous material is involved.


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## chlaurite (Dec 7, 2013)

Chips seem to take a LOOOOONG time to completely incinerate. I've held a (propane/air) torch to a single small chip as a test, for well over 10 minutes, and it looked beautifully white on the outside... But that proved nothing but a half-mm coating, with the majority of the chip still just fine.

on a pan in the coals with a good strong fire going around it, *overnight*, I find that _almost_ does the job. I think problem comes from the outer layer of white acting to insulate everything inside.

For my next batch, I plan to roast them for a few hours, crush them, then put 'em back in overnight. I suspect that will do the trick, leaving nothing but metal and white ash. On the bright side, after the first half hour, they basically stop outgassing nasty things - I wouldn't stick my nose right in the ash, but they don't stink up the place, so you can work with them a little).


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## Smack (Dec 7, 2013)

I've been incinerating mine like cooking stew, stir it once in a while, just don't taste test it.


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## kjavanb123 (Dec 8, 2013)

All,

I learned ICs should be white color from top to the inside in order to complete incineration, how about other components? Besides being crunchy is there any other signs they are completed incinerated?

I took photo of sample boards I incinerated as you can see in the bottom, and the ones I melted using induction furnace on top of it, color is a little bit gray.





Best regards,
Kevin


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## kjavanb123 (Dec 28, 2013)

All,

I finally received the analysis for smokes coming out of the incinerator,


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## chlaurite (Dec 28, 2013)

kjavanb123 said:


> I finally received the analysis for smokes coming out of the incinerator


Any chance you could translate the good bits of that for us? 




chlaurite said:


> For my next batch, I plan to roast them for a few hours, crush them, then put 'em back in overnight.


Just a followup: That worked *amazingly* well.

I used a shallow stainless steel pan (1x4x9) and filled it with chips (mixed NBs, GPUs, and RAM). Worked up a good bed of coals in the stove, packed it with three fresh medium-size logs, one along the back wall and one on each side; then slid the pan right down the middle and let it cook.

An hour later, once those three logs turned to coals, I took out the pan (no odor, everything volatile had long since burned off) and gently crushed the chips with a 2x2 - Didn't try to mash them into dust, just break them up into gravel. At that point, the chips still had a lot of black on the insides, but they broke up easily enough.

Set up three more logs, put it back in the stove overnight, and by morning, I had nothing but pins, heat spreaders, wafers, wires, and white powder. 8) Oh, and the weirdest thing, a small number of chips (larger square ones, don't know which kind) have a fiberglass mat in them that doesn't burn away.

And for the record, my stove does have reburner tubes in it - Everything gets burned twice, once as wood (or chips) at the bottom, then again mixed with heated fresh air. Supposedly it only makes something like 0.7g of creosote per hour - I don't know about _that_, but I can attest to the fact that after four years, the inside of my chimney still looks clean enough to eat off. Now that the EPA actually requires stoves like that, I expect "chimney sweep" as a profession will become as common as "buggy whip manufacturer". :mrgreen:


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## ericrm (Dec 28, 2013)

http://www.lrapa.org/rules_and_regulations/title_30-Incinerator_Regulations.php


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## Anonymous (Dec 29, 2013)

There's no translation needed Chlaurite because the numbers and chemical formulae say it all.

Toxic as hell. 

The Arabic is irrelevant Sir.


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## Harold_V (Dec 29, 2013)

spaceships said:


> There's no translation needed Chlaurite because the numbers and chemical formulae say it all.
> 
> Toxic as hell.
> 
> The Arabic is irrelevant Sir.


Correct. Anything of importance is displayed in clear and concise English. 

Harold


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## chlaurite (Dec 29, 2013)

Keep in mind that you can't compare at-the-smokestack (or tailpipe) numbers to ambient air quality limits. No doubt, it fails the latter something awful, and would certainly kill you if you ran it in an enclosed area.

I asked for a translation, however, because believe it or not, those numbers (without an explanation of the testing conditions) *don't* contain enough information to make a fair comparison to emissions standards (in the US, at least) without units of _volume_ and _time_. If you measured that coming out of the tailpipe of a 25MPG car, those numbers (with the exception of the sulfur compounds) would pass EPA Tier 3 emissions with flying colors - And the sulfur compounds would _still_ pass for uses not required to burn ULSD/ULSHO fuels (aviation, some marine, heating oil, offroad use).

Actually, in some states, those numbers _wouldn't_ pass - Because the HC (which without a translation, most likely means unburned "HydroCarbons", _not_ Hydrogen Cyanide) falls below 500ppm. That would disqualify the test as *likely falsified*, "too good to be true".

I also find it curious that it doesn't contain the numbers _really_ of primary interest to us (since we don't talk about burning a relatively clean hydrocarbon fuel here) - PM10, PM2.5, Lead, Mercury, and Chromium. The last two you wouldn't expect as standard, but the first three, pretty much ubiquitous.


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## Anonymous (Dec 30, 2013)

I hear what you're saying about timings etc Chlaurite although I would point out that he's actually in the UAE and we definitely would need a translator to work out the documentation they have for tolerances and limits :shock:


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## kjavanb123 (Dec 30, 2013)

All,

I didn't see the need of translation, according to the guy who tested the gas exiting from the incinerator, they were taken in 10 minutes and 40 minutes into the burning of misc boards.

It passed the EPA standard here locally.

Regards,
Kevin


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## butcher (Dec 30, 2013)

With the EPA regulations it is how much you burn and produce toxic fumes in a time period.

Industrially they can produce a lot of deadly smoke in one day, and as long as they do not produce too much deadly smoke for the rest of the month, they can pass the EPA's regulations.
Or they can produce just a little deadly smoke every day and as long as they do not produce more deadly smoke than the allowed for that month they can pass the EPA regulation.

Heavy metals in the ash and dust, as well as the gases produced are both toxic.

After burners can help to lower the toxic gases, and scrubbers can help with the toxic gases, but you will still need some type of bag filters to control the toxic heavy metal dust and ash coming from the flue.
I did not see where they tested for particulate matter.

kjavanb123, it is good you are doing this research.
But I still feel you would be better off, being a middle man, and buying and selling the scrap, letting someone else handle the dirty work, and working on getting the most profit from your scrap, by better learning to sort, upgrade or determine value, buying scrap as low as possible upgrading and selling it as high as possible.


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## kjavanb123 (Dec 30, 2013)

Butcher,

Thanks for your posts, the ashes and flying particles were also tested, here is the result, this is done in one hour incineration electronic boards which produced one hell of smoke once i burned a few grams sample.




Sorry about bad quality, haven't figured out how to upload a pdf file with iPad.

I like to be like refiners, who buy scraps, melt to anode, xrf then sell to big smelters, since there is a big copper refinery in close distance.

Regards,
Kevin


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## Anonymous (Dec 30, 2013)

butcher said:


> kjavanb123, it is good you are doing this research.
> But I still feel you would be better off, being a middle man, and buying and selling the scrap, letting someone else handle the dirty work, and working on getting the most profit from your scrap, by better learning to sort, upgrade or determine value, buying scrap as low as possible upgrading and selling it as high as possible.



I think that Butcher is correct Kevin. I think you're trying to reinvent the wheel here unnecessarily. I trade in tons of this stuff, so unless you've got a couple of million bucks to throw at setting up properly, licencing with all the relevant authorities, guaranteeing a regular source of product, then I wouldn't bother.

One of the biggest keys to getting money from refining is understanding where the metals are, and how to get them out. The tiny percentages make the difference between a profit and a loss. People who know this cost a lot of money to employ. You don't know this, and respectfully constantly demonstrate that you really don't even grasp the basics. Melting things into a lump of slag using the wrong process, and sending them off for assay without keeping the basic records to know WHAT you've sent is just silly.

Then again if you do have a few million to burn I guess it doesn't matter but I don't think you do and I urge you to save what you have.

I'm pretty sure that you'll ignore this advice and post because you do that with anything you don't want to hear, but I wanted to make my position clear. You're wasting your time. Learn some stuff.

Excuse the tone of this post. It is no harsher than I have seen used with many many new posters recently guys, and frankly just because Kevin has been a member for a while I don't see the need to sugar coat it.


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## nickvc (Dec 30, 2013)

Kevin I like your enthuasiasm but I will point out a few things I feel aren't right in your overall view.
The first massive error was in your last paragraph where you say you melt into bars and ship using just xrf results, bad mistake there needs to be proper assays done and the bars need to be very large to make the whole process cost effective. The so called refiners of boards rarely refine but incinerate, crush and sort the magnetics off and sieve to remove ash and the metallics are then melted, the ash can also contain values so again mixing, sampling and assaying is also needed there. I hope your aware that the copper refiners take at least 90 days plus to settle and that certain elements can incur penalty charges if over certain percentages. 
Make sure you stay within accepted discharge levels and try to be one step ahead of any regulations to avoid trouble that could shut you down at best. This particular venture is going to be very capital intensive and the equipment will be highly expensive if you want to operate correctly and avoid problems with your local authorities. The bottom line is that you could spend loads of money and still fail to run your plant without trouble or with decent returns to recover your investment. My advice for what it's worth is hire a professional to design a plant and recommend the right equipment and to actually get it running efficiently, it's expensive but cheap if it does the job while trying to do this yourself on the cheap could end up been very expensive if it all fails to work.


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## kjavanb123 (Dec 31, 2013)

All,

Thanks for your input regarding this post, here my response to your opinions.

1- Total equipment costs so far including incinerator, bag house, and induction furnace amount to $20,000
So it is not even into $100,000.

2- What I read in chapter XVIII in Hoke's book and whatever from GoldSilverPro in this forum, the outline for processing ewaste is incineration, ball mill, seive mesh 10, melt the metallics on top of sieve, sample and fire assay ash thst goes through, sell to copper smelters, I am sure they will do some advanced payment based on sample analysis.

3- According to local trading shops, some 20 metric tonnes ewaste had been exported from here which government put a ban on export. As of now I have 300 kg non Chinese motherboards, 102 kg Chinese motherboards along with 1032 kg electronic boards and some 500 kg of telecomm boards, which I am planning to process using above method.

Just wanted to share with everyone the incinerator gas analysis.

Regards
Kevin


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## CBentre (Dec 31, 2013)

Kevin, the best advice I can offer is to check with your local environmental agency before you get to far ahead of yourself. If they are banning exports it's for good reason and they may already have other safeguards in place for local businesses. I do admire your desire to accomplish what you have started but sometimes you just have to take a step back and put everything into perspective. The last thing you would want is to have invested your life savings into something that you simply cannot move forward with. I've been following your post and your rushing through a lot of this in a short period of time. I don't mean for this to sound rude but take baby steps. ...work on one thing at a time and once your 100% satisfied with the results move onto the next task. Keep in mind this dosn't mean results as in a profitable one more as a result that everything your doing has met all health and safety standards, environmental standards and last but not least you will still become successful and profitable in what your doing. The most famous quote I will remember my entire life is "Rome wasn't built in a day" and these words hold true for some of the most successful people in the world. I wish you the best in your adventure but please make sure you do your do-diligence not only for your safety but for the safety of others around you.


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## kjavanb123 (Feb 15, 2014)

All,

Thanks all for your suggestions, as continuation to this post I like to update you regarding this. After some research I contacted some Chinese companies that build tire/plastic pyrolysis plant and some of them claimes they can and have used the same pyrolysis machine to process scrap Printed circuit boards with 20% oil yield and some carbon.
I am looking to that and also an incinerator plus bag house locally will post results soon. 

Regards
Kevin


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## kjavanb123 (Apr 7, 2014)

All,

After a while sample of 2200 lbs of boards which I had sent out to an incinerator manufactorer has arrived, it is very soft and copper seemed to be oxided as it has been sitting outside after incineration, but picked up couple of ICs and seems to be white inside out and very soft, all commercial refining owners is this what fully incinerated circuit boards will look like?
If it is, then should ball or rod mill be my next step?

Closer look at the incinerated circuit boards,



Some of ICs I could recognize that were completely incinerated to white ash,



Thanks for your comments.
Kevin


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