# What should be done next? please help!



## gaurav_347 (Apr 17, 2014)

I am in a bit of a fix. I am recycler based in Central India and i have a level 1 and level 2 plant where the machines are able to remove the epoxy from the printed circuit boards leaving behind only metals. I am planing to go to level 3 now which is refining . I have considered the option to export the pcbs or the metals to the refineries or smelters in Europe and Japan but it takes a lot of time for the whole process say about 4 months till you receive the payment. How should i go about refining these metals on my own. I am only interested in copper ,gold, silver and tin and other metals if feasible. the ferrous metals are already removed in the level 2 plant. 

If you were in my position how would you go about refining these metals. We can process about 1 ton of pcbs which usually yield about 20% of metals. So about 200-220 kgs in a day. What sort of machinery would i need. We have all the necessary space, electricity and the manpower required. i am posting a picture for your reference of how the metals look. Thank you once again.


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## necromancer (Apr 17, 2014)

this is hard to recognize, do you have a better photograph ?


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## nickvc (Apr 17, 2014)

The most cost effective method would be to use cells. As the major constituent of pcb metals is copper maybe look to set up a copper refining operation, there are plenty of details freely available as how this is done. The one problem is that all electrolytic systems need high grade feed stock for them to run efficiently and without constant need of electrolyte changes as they foul, this means taking good samples from your materials and melting and then either assays or use a good, well set xrf to determine the copper content of your material. Ideally the material needs to be 95%+ copper so the assays or xrf readings will tell you how much copper you will need to add to reach the ideal percentage for the cells. The copper from the cell will eventually cover the need for good copper to add and then later you should have pure copper to sell on, the values Au, Ag, Pt and Pd will report in the slimes along with all the other metals.
The choice then is either refine the slimes yourself or melt,assay and sell, you will probably still have a high percentage of copper but the values will be a much higher percentage than with the material as a whole. The one problem element you will encounter is tin but there may be others which will hinder your processing from here and assuming any tin will have formed its wonderful paste form filtering may well be your first headache. The processes needed to refine the values are well documented on the forum but this mix may well present you with some challenges, not insurmountable with study and practice but I would be tempted to try a small scale cell before you go onto a larger operations to see if you can refine the slimes and what problems you are likely to encounter and the equipment and methods to succeed.


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## gaurav_347 (Apr 17, 2014)

necromancer said:


> this is hard to recognize, do you have a better photograph ?


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## gaurav_347 (Apr 17, 2014)

nickvc said:


> The most cost effective method would be to use cells. As the major constituent of pcb metals is copper maybe look to set up a copper refining operation, there are plenty of details freely available as how this is done. The one problem is that all electrolytic systems need high grade feed stock for them to run efficiently and without constant need of electrolyte changes as they foul, this means taking good samples from your materials and melting and then either assays or use a good, well set xrf to determine the copper content of your material. Ideally the material needs to be 95%+ copper so the assays or xrf readings will tell you how much copper you will need to add to reach the ideal percentage for the cells. The copper from the cell will eventually cover the need for good copper to add and then later you should have pure copper to sell on, the values Au, Ag, Pt and Pd will report in the slimes along with all the other metals.
> The choice then is either refine the slimes yourself or melt,assay and sell, you will probably still have a high percentage of copper but the values will be a much higher percentage than with the material as a whole. The one problem element you will encounter is tin but there may be others which will hinder your processing from here and assuming any tin will have formed its wonderful paste form filtering may well be your first headache. The processes needed to refine the values are well documented on the forum but this mix may well present you with some challenges, not insurmountable with study and practice but I would be tempted to try a small scale cell before you go onto a larger operations to see if you can refine the slimes and what problems you are likely to encounter and the equipment and methods to succeed.



Thank you so much for your help . We took out some results from the labs based in Japan and India and the copper content usually ranges from 55-63 % of the metal mixture of 1 ton depending on the type of board you are crushing.


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## gaurav_347 (Apr 17, 2014)

Are there any systems which are readily available in the market for refining such kind of metal mixture for about 200-300 kg/day capacity?


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## RikkiRicardo (Apr 17, 2014)

gaurav

Listen to Nickvc so far you are doing it right now you want to do the recovery of the metals so you will have set up a Electrowinning copper unit then go after the sludge Now i would also like to know what you did with all the magnetic parts? and the aluminum capacitors and aluminum Did you use a electrostatic separator? or just magnetic separator ? this is all very
important you might just be throwing away value are you using one of the China units.If you don't use the Electrowinning you will be just spending to much money in Acids for that kind of recovery From what i can see you will have to hire someone to come there and consult you on your operation for the Refinery or you will be wasting your money and time.
There is a lot to learn.There are a lot more metals to recover if done right.



RikkiRicardo


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## RikkiRicardo (Apr 17, 2014)

gaurav


6 Months ago you where asking the same questions What i have see from your other topics from that assay that is very low
(mixed metal fractions) from one of your old topics.
Have you sent any of your stuff out??? And what price did you get per Ton? of this type of material.

RikkiRicardo


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## 4metals (Apr 17, 2014)

Gaurav,

The answer Nick gave you based on your question is excellent and if refining in house is the route you choose, follow his excellent advice. If you can make your feedstock 95% copper it is relatively easy to scale up to the size electrolytic facility you will need. 

But that is not the end of the story. Now you will be tasked with routinely incinerating some nasty anode bags to prepare the slimes for chemical refining. For this you will need incineration capacity and an acid refining capacity to process your precious metal into sale-able form. (ie. 999+ metal)

If you go that route, you will still have to find a buyer for your precious metals and they are always purchased at a discount so you are likely to be selling under market price. 

Another option is to consider what you have. From my perspective that is one beautiful photograph! 

Lets discuss the main thing a business sending out scrap to a refiner has to deal with, and that is how much metal is really in my material. I get requests from scrap collectors all of the time and all are unsure of the content. There are different ways a refinery can come to determine how much metal is in the scrap. Some incinerate to burn off the non metallic materials and produce a powder which contains precious metals and a pile of charred metal which is not as pretty as your pile. They then melt and assay the charred pile and have low grade copper based bullion to ship to a copper refinery. 

Considering what you would have to spend to process 200 - 220 Kg a day followed by what you will have to do to recover the PM's and get paid for them, I would choose another option.

Remember most people who call themselves low grade refiners are really sampling houses. The one thing they do is produce a homogeneous sample. That is the most important thing here, a homogeneous sample. 

Your little pile in the picture which has had the ferrous metals separated out is just a melt away from being that homogeneous sample. If it were me, I would first get a good melt furnace, one with a capacity of 250 Kg of your material so you can do melts on a single days production. They can be sampled while molten and poured into 30 Kg bars and you will have a representative sample of your entire days production. Now you need to do a fire assay. 

There are many reputable copper refiners who give out very good rates for this material. The key is knowing your assay before you ship. 

The step I outlined above requires equipment and analytical skills that you will have to have even if you go the electrolytic copper refining route, so it is a natural first step. If you ever do get to running your own refinery, not having the ability to analyze your material and control your in house refining accountability is the first step to going out of business. So the analytics are a must anyway. 

Once you are producing your own copper based bullion bars in house and have the ability to assay them to settle your customer, it is an easy calculation to compare what it costs you to ship it to a copper refiner vs. the set up and operating expense of refining yourself. 

I would think you will stop at melting and assaying your own bars and shipping to a copper refiner. 

Shipping out bars that you know the assay of eliminates the wiggle room that shipping unquantified scrap gives to your refiner.


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## RikkiRicardo (Apr 17, 2014)

4metals

Well said this is the only way to go.
This is a way that I'm going with PCB electrolytic copper refining route then melting the sludge to bars then Fire assay.
There is stuff that we will refine in house.
Just for 250 kg electrolytic copper refining unit is a big cost and a big unit you would need just for the rectifier over 4000 amps and how many tanks.

RikkiRicardo


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## nickvc (Apr 17, 2014)

I have to say of the two options the melting, assaying and selling of your material will be the one with the least headaches and least outlay financially. Assaying your own materials would also be advantageous unless you have access to fast and reasonably cheap assays which are accurate. 
4metals knows this business inside out so heed whatever he suggests, refining isn't always the best choice and in many cases the worst if good rates are available on whatever you have.


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## 4metals (Apr 17, 2014)

Keep in mind that the big refineries are like other businesses, they want to turn around their metal as fast as possible. If they receive bars from you which they can process directly in their system after sampling, their turn around time should be less and your payout will come quicker. I always added copper to my copper based bullion bars because they were paying me for copper anyway and the bars they received were remelted and sampled and poured directly into anodes quickly because they were received 95%+ copper already. They had to do less and I was paid faster. 

Even if you do it in house, your capacity to plate the pure copper only determines how fast you can sell the copper. So 220 kilograms of pure copper plated out per day determines your electrolytic recovery equipment needs. You then have to wait for the slimes, which are the concentrates containing the precious metals, to accumulate into quantities that are efficient to process. That can take a month before you even start on the precious metals in house.


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## g_axelsson (Apr 17, 2014)

Gaurav, when I see your metal pile I only have one question, what are you doing with the plastics? I would suspect a lot of gold is contained in bond wires, locked in the epoxy plastics of the chips. When shredded I would suspect it would follow the plastic fraction.
Do you have a way of extracting the gold from the plastics? Have you tested the plastics for the gold content? 

Maybe you only runs low grade scrap so this isn't an issue. I'm just curious.

I don't have any practical experience of running shredded circuit boards so I could just be wrong about where a large part of the gold ends up.

Göran


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## goldsilverpro (Apr 17, 2014)

Note: I wrote this before the 3 previous posts were made.

I agree with 4metals. The simplest, cleanest, most profitable way would be to melt, sample, assay, cast ingots, and ship. It would take 4 months to "fill the pipeline" but, after that, you would be receiving regular checks. Also, you may be able to get partial advances during the 1st 4 months, but you would likely have to pay interest.

To me, it would be best to get a 250kg tilt induction furnace rather than a gas furnace. An induction furnace agitates the molten metal and makes it much more homogeneous than a gas furnace does. Therefore, pin samples (I would take at least 3 per melt and run at least triplicate assays) from an induction furnace would represent the entire melt. With a gas furnace, you would probably have to pattern drill each 30kg bar and assay the bars separately. Also, the induction furnace would melt most any combination of metals. With a gas furnace, you would likely have to add more copper, in order to lower the melting temperature enough so everything would melt.

As 4metals said, you MUST know what's in those bars before they are shipped. The best way to do this is to setup and learn accurate in-house sampling and assaying.

When magnetically separating, you would also remove the Kovar, which is often gold plated. Have you tested the magnetic fraction for gold? What percentage of the total is magnetic? If it's low and if you use an induction furnace, it may be better to leave it in. Also, I would bet there are PM values in the other materials (organics, ceramics, etc) that were separated from the metallics.

To run an electrolytic cell, you would have to cast anodes by melting the grain, along with a lot of extra copper. Assuming you had 100 pounds of material that ran 60% copper, you would have to add an extra 600 pounds of pure copper to get it to 95%. Also, there are probably 20 different metals represented in your metallic material. Some will end up in the anode slimes, but some will enter the solution and, in a fairly short time, it will be contaminated to the point where it will be "poisoned" and you will have to change it in order to continue getting decent cathode copper. 

I can think of ways to dissolve the base metals, but this would require lots of chemicals, lots of labor, fume control, etc. I can think of none that would be profitable on this low grade material.

All in all, I think that processing this material yourself is a bad idea and much less profitable than simply melting and shipping. The lack of income for 4 months would be a cheap price to pay, compared with the high costs and potential problems of refining it yourself.


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## 4metals (Apr 17, 2014)

The potential for precious metal in the plastics fraction is high. Back in the day when I incinerated this type of material, the material was crushed and sifted to get to the metal fraction. I would assume that at least a percentage of the PM value in the powder resulted from the grinding process. It does make sense that some of it was also a result of the physical separation process you use. You have said nothing of how you do the physical separation. 

A little input as to how you do that and the types of equipment may be useful here. 

GSP is right about plated kovar in the magnetic fraction, I always kept that portion separate and it never was up to payable limits. As your material has not been burnt, any plating in the steel can be seen and physically picked out and put in the copper based fraction. In my experience, it wasn't worth processing the magnetics in house, all of the house magnetics were shipped to JM for us to witness a very large copper melt to get paid on the PM content. Keep in mind this was back in the day of $300 gold, I'm not as young as I used to be and things have changed! 

If you get paid for the different types of plastic it may be more cost effective to sell it as plastic than to try to extract any PM's. A test incineration of a sample of the material, crushed and sifted in a cleaned mill and sifter (to avoid contamination of a sample) will tell the story. Cross contamination can really hurt you here so be sure you sample in cleaned equipment. 

If you have a process where you can process a ton a day of circuit boards and end up with the material you have shown, you could build a decent business around the witness and sample your boards process. You could charge a straight per pound incoming fee and a refining charge and retain a percentage of the values. Not easy to get that done these days.


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## 4metals (Apr 17, 2014)

GSP said;


> To me, it would be best to get a 250kg tilt induction furnace rather than a gas furnace. An induction furnace agitates the molten metal and makes it much more homogeneous than a gas furnace does. Therefore, pin samples (I would take at least 3 per melt and run at least triplicate assays) from an induction furnace would represent the entire melt. With a gas furnace, you would probably have to pattern drill each 30kg bar and assay the bars separately. Also, the induction furnace would melt most any combination of metals. With a gas furnace, you would likely have to add more copper, in order to lower the melting temperature enough so everything would melt.



I agree about the melter being induction. I was recently with a client witnessing a large low grade melt and they did not sample with pin dips. They actually sampled the way I did it 30 years ago with gas furnaces. They started the pour and put a clean small crucible in the metal stream and poured it onto a plank of wood lying at an angle in a metal pail full of water. They directed the stream of metal at the wood / water interface. This produced fine BB's as samples.

They did this at the beginning of the melt, in the middle, and at the end. The pour lasted about 5 minutes so they needed to be set up with 3 pails with planks as there was little time to waste. 

Each sample was screened to produce a small pile of balls about 1/8" to 3/16" in diameter. 

The samples were not mixed but given to us and the lab as beginning, middle, and end pour samples. 

The proof of the mixing ability of the induction furnace was in the fact that all of the samples assayed very close to each other. 

I thought some of the older refiners might relate to this technique.


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## goldsilverpro (Apr 17, 2014)

4metals said:


> You have said nothing of how you do the physical separation.
> 
> A little input as to how you do that and the types of equipment may be useful here.


I totally agree. It would be very helpful to know that.


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## necromancer (Apr 17, 2014)

not sure if these are helpful to you, but here they are
some are old, prices are very out of date.


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## gaurav_347 (Apr 18, 2014)

RikkiRicardo said:


> gaurav
> 
> Listen to Nickvc so far you are doing it right now you want to do the recovery of the metals so you will have set up a Electrowinning copper unit then go after the sludge Now i would also like to know what you did with all the magnetic parts? and the aluminum capacitors and aluminum Did you use a electrostatic separator? or just magnetic separator ? this is all very
> important you might just be throwing away value are you using one of the China units.If you don't use the Electrowinning you will be just spending to much money in Acids for that kind of recovery From what i can see you will have to hire someone to come there and consult you on your operation for the Refinery or you will be wasting your money and time.
> ...



We use magnetic separator to remove any kinds of ferrous metals . The machines are made in India itself but based on the chinese concept with some modifications made for reducing the metal loss. I agree with you Rikki there is much to learn and there is no one way to process the information as there is always an alternative information available which feels better to put into practice and this creates a lot of confusion. I am already consulting someone regarding the recovery. Thank you for the help.


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## gaurav_347 (Apr 18, 2014)

4metals said:


> Gaurav,
> 
> The answer Nick gave you based on your question is excellent and if refining in house is the route you choose, follow his excellent advice. If you can make your feedstock 95% copper it is relatively easy to scale up to the size electrolytic facility you will need.
> 
> ...



Thank you for your support and the knowledge you provided . I had never considered this option before so now i surely will. Can you recommend me some refineries who would be interested in such bullion bars?


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## gaurav_347 (Apr 18, 2014)

g_axelsson said:


> Gaurav, when I see your metal pile I only have one question, what are you doing with the plastics? I would suspect a lot of gold is contained in bond wires, locked in the epoxy plastics of the chips. When shredded I would suspect it would follow the plastic fraction.
> Do you have a way of extracting the gold from the plastics? Have you tested the plastics for the gold content?
> 
> Maybe you only runs low grade scrap so this isn't an issue. I'm just curious.
> ...



We do not shred the chips and the fingers are usually cut manually . The lab analysis of the epoxy did not show any precious metals in them. As of today we do not have the knowledge to remove gold from plastic. thank you


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## gaurav_347 (Apr 18, 2014)

goldsilverpro said:


> 4metals said:
> 
> 
> > You have said nothing of how you do the physical separation.
> ...



In India the labor is quite cheap (4 usd/per day) so manual dismantling makes more sense instead operating the machines . The electronics that come in are first manually dismantled . The pcb and the wires are separated . The pcbs go into the shredder -->granulation of pcbs--> size separation--> plastic and metal separator--> magnetic separator


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## gaurav_347 (Apr 18, 2014)

4metals said:


> Gaurav,
> 
> The answer Nick gave you based on your question is excellent and if refining in house is the route you choose, follow his excellent advice. If you can make your feedstock 95% copper it is relatively easy to scale up to the size electrolytic facility you will need.
> 
> ...




Thank you once again for your help . Really appreciate it. I will certainly pay heed to what you have said .


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## 4metals (Apr 18, 2014)

Start with the biggest

http://www.aurubis.com/en/


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## alexxx (Apr 20, 2014)

I have very similar material that I wish to process myself.

I have tried many refiners so far, most of them will just actually sample / assay and ship to a bigger refiner such as Umicore, Aurubis, Xstrata.

I have never tried the big boys yet, mainly because you get your settlement 120 days after the material has arrived to their facility.
All the other small time refiners will mess with your numbers and recovery, that's just the way this business is conducted. They will always take advantage of small recyclers, period...

I have also found that all the big boys will quote your processing fees extremely high for doré bars, between 1.20 & 1.40 USD / lb, instead of the basic 0.40 - 0.80 USD / lb for circuit boards. It simply makes no sense sending doré bars to them.
So back to square one, sending the sorted boards to them... For me, this is a no brainer, no way, I have a feeling that I will get screwd (again)... Sampling and assaying shredded board wont be accurate too.

So, with the following assay, what would you pros do in order to recover Au, Ag, Pd, Pt, Cu, Sn & Pb ? All other recovered element is a plus of course, I would love to recover Sb in the process...

Cu 82.247%
Al 4.142%
Ca 0.006%
Fe 0.491%
Mn 0.026%
Pb 2.013%
Sn 7.711%
Ti 0.244%
Pt 0.003%
Pd 0.018%
Ag 0.921%
Au 0.064%
Si 0.006%
Zn 0.221%
S 0.114%
Ch 0.083%
As 0.021%
Ni 0.353%
Sb 6.542%

On my end, I would like to process 1 ton of circuit boards daily, I have that material on hand.
I'm able to shred, incinerate, ball mill, sieve, smelt to some extend...

The questions :

- Fluxing with a good flux recipe prior to casting the shirts might help getting rid of some base metals, and prevent a bit the cell contamination. Any recipe you guys might want to share ?

- How one would keep clean the cell, while recovering any contaminants such as Sn, Pb, Zn ? (the goal remains to replace the electrolyte as little as possible while having a maximum recovery)
Any element that could be plated out as a cleaning procedure ? What about additives, or cementation of unwanted base metals such as Fe, Al ?

- A first treatment of the alloyed beads in hcl might help too, any toughts on this one ?

cheers,

Alex


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## g_axelsson (Apr 20, 2014)

alexxx said:


> I have also found that all the big boys will quote your processing fees extremely high for doré bars, between 1.20 & 1.40 USD / lb, instead of the basic 0.40 - 0.80 USD / lb for circuit boards. It simply makes no sense sending doré bars to them.
> So back to square one, sending the sorted boards to them... For me, this is a no brainer, no way, I have a feeling that I will get screwd (again)... Sampling and assaying shredded board wont be accurate too.


Hi Alex, I don't understand your problem with a higher processing fee for the doré bars. It takes more circuit boards to make a bar. I don't know how much, but for the arguments sake let's say that it takes 4 pounds of circuit boards to make a pound of doré bar. Then the processing fee for raw circuit boards would be between 4x0.40 - 4x0.80 = 1.60 - 3.20 USD/lb while the fee for the bar would be 1.20 - 1.40 USD / lb. Still less than processing the raw cards.



> So, with the following assay, what would you pros do in order to recover Au, Ag, Pd, Pt, Cu, Sn & Pb ? All other recovered element is a plus of course, I would love to recover Sb in the process...
> 
> Cu 82.247%
> Al 4.142%
> ...


I see two problems with your analyze, the total sum is >105% (and no oxides, oxygen) and what is "Ch"?

Göran


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## alexxx (Apr 20, 2014)

Goran,

Cu is probably off since assayed on a later time with a different assayer.

Usually I get between 44 to 48% of alloy out of boards (clean ones of course, no excess steel, aluminum, batteries, etc..). Remains the pulp with some values, but that's another story...

And remember, in order to get the doré bars, there's some costs involved... 0.04 / 0.06 for shredding, another 0.05 / 0.06 for removing the magnetic fractions, incineration a few more cents, more expenses on smelting (gas, fluxes). 

At the end, it will cost roughly 0.50 to get the bars. But you know exactly what you ship to the refiner or process yourself.

Leaving that 1.20 - 1.40 on the table + minimum lot size fee + % on the recovery + flat 2-3$ per Toz + penalties on berrylium + transport fees + tax & duties + delayed settlements + a huge risk of getting screwed by your refiner (and you will) is simply too much in my mind.

I still believe that for a medium size operation, and even a decent small operation, full recovery / refining in house in the way to go.


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## alexxx (Apr 20, 2014)

> no oxides, oxygen) and what is "Ch"?
> 
> Göran



Ch -> Cr

oxides & oxygen, should I assay for those as well ? How these are going to impact the recovery ?


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## g_axelsson (Apr 20, 2014)

Thanks for the clarification Alex.

Do not take any of my comments as advices on how to do the refining as I'm only a hobby refiner. I was just pointing out the fact that there were no oxides in the analyze. In a melt from mixed metals I would expect at least some amounts of oxidized metal and that would have been added to the total too. Is the assay from one of your doré bars?
Quite often you see people analyze some crushed rocks with XRF and then stating that the metals add upp to 100% or more. In that case ignoring silicates, oxides, sulphides... and so on, just because a computer tells them it is so.

You must have a quite good source for your PCB scrap, 44-48% alloy is a quite high number. I did some research and found out some reported averages of PCB metal content:
http://cfsd.org.uk/seeba/TD/reports/PCB_Study.pdf gives 70% non-metallic and 16% copper 4% solder
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/content_images/fig/2170290306003.png 16% copper, 33% total metal
http://psrcentre.org/images/extraimages/312513.pdf gives 18.5% copper 9.35% other metals

If you have a source of scrap that makes it cheaper to send in full PCB:s instead of doré bars then you should naturally do it.

Göran


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## 4metals (Apr 20, 2014)

Alex

How were the samples generated to come up with these assays? How large was the lot of boards? What was the total sample weight? Were these numbers generated by an XRF?

Assuming a ton of melted metal parts. Are you really expecting to be paid for about $40 worth of lead? That is what it would be worth after you separated it, purified it and sold it. Less your costs of course. 

Your solutions will get fouled up pretty quickly so you will have considerable waste treatment costs as well. This is only profitable on a very large scale, not the type of thing a small or medium sized collector should be looking to get into. Concentrate on producing a homogeneous sample and getting a reputable assay for the values.


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## alexxx (Apr 21, 2014)

4metals said:


> Alex
> 
> How were the samples generated to come up with these assays? How large was the lot of boards? What was the total sample weight? Were these numbers generated by an XRF?


We've generated this sampling from 2204 lbs of mixed medium/ periferal boards (especially the types of boards that are difficult to price & resell, no p3s, p4s, server boards in there). Results were obtained with an XRF. A fire assay was also conducted on Au, Ag, Pt, Pd & Cu. All the values were a bit lower than the actual XRF read. I still have many samples of this batch if anyone has any interest in playing with it.



4metals said:


> Assuming a ton of melted metal parts. Are you really expecting to be paid for about $40 worth of lead? That is what it would be worth after you separated it, purified it and sold it. Less your costs of course.


I see it from another angle. If some elements could be recovered during basic cell cleaning / maintenance, these by products are worth something. If I can generate 40$ worth of Pb everyday and throw it into a drum to sell it at the end of month, my answer is yes, I will pay extra attention to recover these values. That extra 1200$ monthly of Pb will pay my electricity bill or 2 great seats for the next hockey game. Plus, when watching the price of Sn, I can't keep saying to myself, man, you need to get a piece of that non payable material. 130 lbs of Tin per MT of boards is a lot of money when you work on small margins like we do.



4metals said:


> Your solutions will get fouled up pretty quickly so you will have considerable waste treatment costs as well. This is only profitable on a very large scale, not the type of thing a small or medium sized collector should be looking to get into.


Do you believe a contaminated solution could be cleaned by plating out Sn, Zn, Ni, Al and other elements, and than reused to some extend ? If the answer is yes, the waste treatment costs are nothing else than regular processing costs to clean the cell and recover other values.



4metals said:


> Concentrate on producing a homogeneous sample and getting a reputable assay for the values.


That's indeed already a huge challenge, the exact same looking material won't give the same results, and without a homogeneous mix, it's really difficult to calculate your profitability.

One very important thing I forgot to mention, is that I wish to work on the maximum recovery, not the highest refining %. As long as I deliver to my PM broker 40%+ pure metal, I get paid the same. It doesn't matter much that the gold runs at 48% purity or 98,75% purity, I get the same price at the end. And I have no interest into working hard to get these triple or quadruple 9s. It would be even better to deliver an alloyed mix of Au, Ag, Pt & Pd into a single bar to my broker and get all my payable instead of 4 separate bars (avoiding the separate lot fees). The goal remains, getting the most out of your material (Cu, Sn, Pb for instance).


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## Pantherlikher (Apr 21, 2014)

Not sure if this is a thought, or if you have access to this type of heater.
But years ago, my first go round with depopulating boards, I used this to heat the solder and dropped everything off. 5 seconds or so was enough to melt the solder to get everything off. Any longer and the board would start smoking. With some practice, I was popping boards like crazy leaving a big tray of stuff to seperate.

Think this would make more sense since labor is cheap. Spend the time seperating into each type so you can process or sell as is.

It would seem logical to me to process like items then making a mass of what ever is there.

I made short work of several hundred pounds of computer cards and mother(main) boards. Then made lots of piles of each type of part.

B.S.
Just a thought


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## nickvc (Apr 22, 2014)

Alex there is no easy or cheap way to refine this material inhouse, the large refiners you quoted are all large base metal refiners with the precious metals been a by product, a nice bonus which comes from huge quantities of material not just circuit boards or e scrap. 
If you produced a ton of dore bars a day they can add that to the hundreds or thousands of tons of copper they process daily which minimises the problems with fouling the solutions too quickly, they also have inhouse assay and testing available to monitor the solutions. The slimes which are where your values will be are going to be your next challenge due to the mix of metals within them and here you need experience and plant to handle them due to the toxicity of some of them and the complications of recovering the maximum value, the big boys no doubt have ways of recovering virtually all the metals which again pays with big volumes but which will cost big bucks to install and staff.
I have said it many times listen to 4metals he has been there and knows his stuff, if you want to cherry pick some materials to refine inhouse that's totally different to what you want to do. If you can melt your material and assay your bars then that's the best route in my opinion also, then ship to the big boys, yes it takes 120 days but advances can be made but interest is charged. I know margins are tight but don't be penny wise and dollar foolish, the cost to recover tin, lead or whatever else is going to be more than they are worth on a small scale, it might even be the case that even the big players ship on to other specialist refiners some of the materials as it isn't worth their while trying to recover them any further. 
Spend your time and energies on what your good at, sourcing material and getting it to a state you ship with known contents, make sure assays are agreed before processing starts, and then nail a good deal with the big players, if you can increase your output I bet higher returns will be offered perhaps you can become a sampler of others materials and ship theirs aswell, having a few large regular customers ensures bills and wages are paid even for big companies.


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## 4metals (Apr 22, 2014)

Alex,

There is only one way to get a homogeneous sample, and that is to melt the entire metallics fraction together at the proper temperature. This involves having an induction furnace large enough to melt the entire lot. There are too many variables to do anything but estimate value any other way. 

As far as expecting to recover other metals by processing in house you have totally missed the point in my mention of lead recovery. You make it sound like the $40 worth of lead is just sitting there as a bar to pick up and sell. Your costs to recover this lead and put it into sale-able form will undoubtedly exceed the $40 the lead is worth. 

The one thing everyone who is in the refining business comes to learn in time is that a refinery is a specialty house. They have a few types of scrap that they specialize in and they set up for, and process those materials profitably. Then they have a list of refiners they have relationships with who can process the scrap types they can not run profitably. So essentially every refiner is a niche refiner. They also have an analytical ability to determine the quantity of the metals they are shipping so they do not ship blind. I have said it many times, If you cannot analyze it yourself, go with the material and witness the sampling. 

Take a big copper refiner for example. They get in the bars you ship them and have given you rates to pay on the precious metals and copper. Their cells produce pure copper, that is their cash cow. Then they concentrate the precious metals in the slimes in sufficient quantities that it becomes cost effective to refine them in house as well. 
Then they have to deal with the lead, antimony and tin that you want to be paid for. Those bad actors foul up their electrolyte and cost them to get rid of. They usually come out in the waste treatment sludges and if done properly they can be shipped to another refiner who pays on the metals in the sludges if they are part of the major content. If they are lucky it pays for what they put into it. They would rather live in a perfect world where the only contaminants in the copper were precious metals, it just doesn't happen that way. 

Every refiner I know has a niche they work. Do they expand on their niche? Sure. But that comes after determining that there is sufficient feedstock and profitability in expansion. I do not know of many e-waste refiners (other than those who started as copper refiners and still produce copper as their primary product) who do everything in house and are profitable. 

It would be nice to pick up that 40 pound lead bar out of the slimes and get paid for it, unfortunately it ain't that simple.


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## goldsilverpro (Apr 22, 2014)

Things may have changed over the years but, when I used to ship refiner's bars, the only thing they paid for, besides the PM's, was copper. With some metals, if over certain percentages, penalties ($) were imposed. I remember that if nickel was over 5%, you drew a penalty.


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## 4metals (Apr 22, 2014)

Same is true today, lead is also on the list but percentages vary. Cadmium costs you big time too but if the precious metals do not come up to certain percentages they can enter the not payable list as well. Some refiners also have minimum deductions which hurt the smaller shippers.


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## alexxx (Apr 22, 2014)

goldsilverpro said:


> Things may have changed over the years but, when I used to ship refiner's bars, the only thing they paid for, besides the PM's, was copper. With some metals, if over certain percentages, penalties ($) were imposed. I remember that if nickel was over 5%, you drew a penalty.



Same goes these days. Same payable.
Penalties on excess Berrylium, Nickel, Mercury.


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## gaurav_347 (Apr 24, 2014)

Alex & 4metals,

What according to you is the best possible way to process pcbs for separating the epoxy and metals with low percentage of metal loss? 

ps- thanks for all the help guys !


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## 4metals (Apr 24, 2014)

The best possible way is the way that is the most profitable and do-able by you!

There are different ways to get to the end you seek, all with some good and some bad features. In the end, if you think about this for a while, the manufacturers of the circuitry were not thinking about how complete recovery could be when the board reached the end of its useful life. As a result you have a mixture of materials that are bonded or masked or clad in such a way that they are difficult to separate by density separation. 

That could make you say "Well then lets just incinerate!" But burning has its issues and the biggest is pollution. Then you end up with a powdered fraction and a metallic fraction, both going to separate refining processes. Oh, don't forget what values go up the stack or are caught in your bag-house. 

Ok what about chemical leaching? Again some of the metals are masked and contact between a leach solution and the values is necessary. It works for some e-waste not for all.

Gaurav has a density separation process which makes a metallic fraction relatively free of plastics and epoxy. Where do the ceramic dice or semiconductors end up? They often have PM's sandwiched between layers of ceramic. Do your boards even have ceramic components? It is impossible to say you will or will not have precious metal value in the plastics/epoxy pile. It depends on too many variables. If your material has ceramic semiconductors I would think they could be separated out by density and processed as a separate stream. 

Bottom line is no one system gets it all because when they were designed and manufactured there was little or no thought given to end of life recycling so you have an infinitely varied mix to deal with. Could you design a system to get it all? Maybe. Could you recoup the expense of the get it all system from extra recovery? Highly unlikely. 

Welcome to the real world of e-waste recovery.


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## kjavanb123 (Jul 15, 2014)

I am reaching the same point as alex and gaurav, I have over 1000lbs of mixed boards mostly peripheal ones, which takes ages to depopulate with men power.
So my theory is to grind the boards to very fine powder, seieve and screen, then use a shaker table to separate metals and plastics or ceramics. This grinder is built in a way that could produce fine powder like flour from quartz ore in one hiur 100kg, and the builder already tested for different kinds of boards. It is sealed during grinding, for discharge there is a gate tht is open. 
Now would shaker table be able to get some of the heavy precious metals, such as gold bonding wires, or tantalium? I will have the induction furnace with crucible capacity of 160lbs to do melt.
The closest major copper refinery to me, I contacted they have never had any copper dore bar produced from e waste, so I need to propose to them please kindly advise what should I write in that letter to the copper refinery? Tell them the kind of metals that might be in the dore bar produced from ewaste, and how they going to pay me?

Thanks
Kevin


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## 4metals (Jul 15, 2014)

> Tell them the kind of metals that might be in the dore bar produced from ewaste



Excuse my while I go bang my head against the wall!

This is exactly the problem with e-waste, it varies depending on what you feed your system. So how can you answer the question?

Years ago, when the classic fire assay books were written, the variety of metals the assayer would likely see were limited. Interferences caused by some component of a sample were usually worked around by fluxing or scorification and the chances of having a wide variety of interferences in one sample were rare. 

Fast forward a hundred years, e-waste enters the scene. Exotic metals, precious metals, and rare earth metals all woven into a mixture that was never something Mother Nature would ever think of putting together. 

There are some metals which will be left with the slimes in the copper electrolytic circuit and there are some that will degrade the electrolyte to the point where it has to be replaced. If your dore bars are of the type that are collected in the anode slimes then the copper refiner is a happy camper and his process is made for your scrap. But if you have a lot of un-desirable metals which will degrade his system, he is forced to dilute these elements with other copper waste to make a blend he can deal with. In effect dilution of the bad actors so the electrolytic system can handle them. 

Your dore bars are likely to vary with what you process and your rates will vary with what you mix in. The only way around this is to know what you are adding to a melt and this comes from running complete analysis of your dore bars and comparing the results to what went into the melt. Developing this type of database is critical to finding a refiner to cost effectively process your material. 

There is a certain level of processing e-waste you can aspire to and beyond that I am inclined to confess you will need to learn some analytical chemistry. Experience on an AA or ICP is much more important for e waste than any other type of mixed dore bars. 

I see a trend in refining to process a material to a certain point and quantify it and send it to a refiner who can process the material cost effectively. Unless you are getting tons of a specific material setting up for the final recovery may be fruitless. The industry is changing, e-waste is evolving even catalysts for converters is facing challenges. There is a process of adding a rare earth oxide Cerium(III) Oxide to the catalysts which helps prevent the catalyst honeycomb from clogging up. The cerium can be recovered if the catalysts are leached but not if they are smelted. So depending on how much the Cerium value per converter is worth, that may change the way catalysts are handled in the future. 

The one thing that will remain constant is good sampling and analytical chemistry.


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