# Precious Metal Furnaces



## aufox5 (Sep 23, 2013)

I'm a newbie here, been in the PM refining biz long time. I am looking for a furnace to process circuit boards. this would be for the primary process of burning off non metallic, the ash would be milled and screened and send to a primary copper refinery. I need capacity of 500 kg/day or larger. Please advise, thanks


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## Lou (Sep 23, 2013)

Sounds like you want an incineration set up?

Most of these furnace for escrap are custom builds, given all of the environmental control systems required to keep the emissions down.


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## grance (Sep 23, 2013)

If you in the united states good luck dealing with the EPA is not fun. The filtering system you would need is very expensive and if your doin this as a commercial business permits and licenses are expensive. I dont know if your planing on grinding them first or any thing but http://www.makeyourowngoldbars.com has some large tilting induction furnaces. Sorry if this dosnt help. 

P.S. there in the electric furnace section


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## 4metals (Sep 23, 2013)

You are looking for an incinerator. Unfortunately due to politics, you cannot call it an incinerator when you file it for your permits to operate. I have seen them successfully permitted using various names, I think a "thermal oxidizer" is my favorite. 

Smaller refiners use batch type incinerators and put the batch in a tray and cycle it. That usually is difficult to control. 

Processing 500kg a day is a lot of nasty material to burn off, you need a high temperature after burner with the proper smoke retention time to assure complete combustion and I would think sending a pre granulated feed stock into the unit at constant flow rate will make control easier. Printed circuit board burning will potentially require a bag house for solids retention before the stack disperses them over the countryside. Still you are talking about a kilogram a minute for an 8 hour shift. I'm thinking you will be looking at a rotary incinerator with a big afterburner and either a wet scrubber or a bag house. And a granulator.


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## niteliteone (Sep 24, 2013)

Might look into using the PC boards as a fuel source or a small scale Electricity Co-Generation plant. The EPA regulations might be easier on you if you propose a "Green" purpose or product.


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## rusty (Sep 24, 2013)

niteliteone said:


> Might look into using the PC boards as a fuel source or a small scale Electricity Co-Generation plant. The EPA regulations might be easier on you if you propose a "Green" purpose or product.




Industry spends millions of dollars trying to cut down on their carbon footprint to reduce their carbon tax. http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/carbon-tax.htm


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## niteliteone (Sep 24, 2013)

rusty said:


> niteliteone said:
> 
> 
> > Might look into using the PC boards as a fuel source or a small scale Electricity Co-Generation plant. The EPA regulations might be easier on you if you propose a "Green" purpose or product.
> ...


"Industry" ships this stuff over seas where it is burned in open air pits, which defeats any reductions in "Carbon Footprint" of any industry doing so.
Here in California, Business's are taxed for doing so, but are given carbon credits for sending waste to Co-generation plants where the EPA monitors the emissions of these Co-gen. plants.


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## samuel-a (Sep 26, 2013)

When incinirating e-scrap, the "carbon footprint" (CO2) is probably of least importance in terms of emmision control. I would actually consider it a positive footprint since recycling metals from electronics saves a whole bunch of energy had it been arrived from primery resource.

The real killers are the Dioxins, Furans, BFR's, Sulfur and Nitrogen compunds.
As far as i know and as 4metals mentioned, a good and hot after burner + scrub/baghouse should reduce the above toxic products to within the allowd limits.



niteliteone said:


> Might look into using the PC boards as a fuel source or a small scale Electricity Co-Generation plant. The EPA regulations might be easier on you if you propose a "Green" purpose or product.



Umicore claims to do just that in their Hobokan facility.


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## 9kuuby9 (Sep 26, 2013)

You should take a look at the big incinerator they use in this company :mrgreen: 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjNJqglDhz0[/youtube]

In Most cases Big company's cast large anodes and then via electrolysis recover any precious metals from those anodes.

In the video above they use an incinerator and sieve all the remaining ashes which contains base & precious metals, and move onward from their.


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## grance (Sep 26, 2013)

Nice vid find and man thats alot of cyanide.


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## aufox5 (Sep 30, 2013)

All of the responses have merit, thanks to you all, very familiar with environmental regs, plan is have venturi scrubber for solid/gas removal and cooling, then baghouse for final particulate removal. Carbon footprint is not an issue at these volumes, dioxin and furan will not form at higher temps, sox & nox are present as products of combustion, but easily controlled with current environ technology. My best vocabulary for this is not incineration rather, thermal reduction....., back to the search for an adequate, cost effective thermal reduction unit.


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## aufox5 (Sep 30, 2013)

regarding the video of ACR's process, they are using equipment and technology that is over 50 years old, no big deal to fabricate, I did see 4 or 5 OSHA issues in the 3 minutes watched.


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## goldsilverpro (Sep 30, 2013)

aufox5 said:


> regarding the video of ACR's process, they are using equipment and technology that is over 50 years old, no big deal to fabricate, I did see 4 or 5 OSHA issues in the 3 minutes watched.


Please itemize these 4 or 5 OSHA issues in detail, if possible.


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## niteliteone (Oct 1, 2013)

I saw 2 issues that bothered me in the video.
1. was where the 2 guys were reaching into the cyanide bath removing a container of scrap that could easily puncture the "nitrile" gloves they were wearing, instead of heaver, chemical and puncture resistive gloves required by OSHA.
2. was the man in the flame suit walking up to the large furnace to stir the molten metal. I didn't like the open tops of his gloves being open where molten metal could easily run inside if splashed on the man.
I had this happen to me back in 2006 where an explosion happened in a molten solder bath I was cleaning and molten solder ran down my arms into my safety gloves resulting in 2nd and 3rd degree burns to bath of my hands.


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