# My First AP process.



## LaurenceOs (Jul 4, 2009)

Hi guys 

I'm just currently processing only 20-25 of those green fiber chips i bought of glory cloud to practise with. I'm following steves video to do AP.

I noticed when i put in my hydrochloric acid, it went a little crazy, it was sizzling and giving of a bit of fumes, i diluted 6% hydrogen peroxide 50/50 and added it in. The sizzling calmed down but the reaction continued to work. Almost all pins were in the bottom of the bigger bucket withing 15-20 minutes with good agitation.

The ap is now a greenie blue colour, quite dark.

The pins still appear to be in pin form, will these dissolve with time? 

And is there anything different i should do as im processing chips not fingers?

The video is brilliant Steve, I've literally cloned what you've done .

Thanks guys!

Laurence


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## lazersteve (Jul 4, 2009)

Lawrence,

The extreme reaction to HCl sounds distinctly like aluminum was included somehow.

The pins are likely hollowed out or will be after a day or so. Swirl the liquid and see if the pins float around freely. The green fiber cpus usually have kovar legs so it's very odd that your reaction proceeded so quickly. Can you be more specific with a photo as to which type of cpus you processed?

Steve


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## LaurenceOs (Jul 4, 2009)

They're celleron 766s, all of them.

shall i just carry on with the same method? cos i think i may need to filter it differently

Laurence


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## glorycloud (Jul 5, 2009)

Did you first make the AP solution before you poured in over the CPU's?
I mix the 31% HCL and 3% peroxide together first and then carefully pour it over the processors.


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## LaurenceOs (Jul 5, 2009)

Lol no i didnt, just kinda did it how steve did it.

I went to check on them a little while ago, the liquid is now very hard to see through and is a yellowy brown colour. When i tip aside the liquid all the pins seem to be black. with a small portion still with gold on them.

Steve, there are some hollow pins floating around but its majority little glittering flakes floading around.

Any explanations as to whats happening and how i should approach the next step?

Cheers guys.


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## LaurenceOs (Jul 7, 2009)

Help guys! 

Because of the vigorous agitation and swirling to get the process to speed up, its mainly glittering gold dust floating around. There's also some black dust in there, not sure how i should go about cleaning this lot..

Come on man, help a newbie out


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## lazersteve (Jul 7, 2009)

Let the black powder and gold flakes settle then siphon off the bulk of the liquids. Pull the stripped fiber portion of the cpu cores out and spray each one with a spray bottle to remove the gold foils and powder.

Add HCl to dissolve any odd colored solids (gray, tan, or green salts = copper I chloride). Let the solution settle again and gently pour off the liquid being careful not to pour the gold out. 

Transfer the gold powder to a small glass beaker using the spray bottle to police the fine gold particles into the beaker. Rinse the fine gold with water and let settle. The rinse water should be clear. If not add more HCl and repeat rinse. Pour off the bulk of the water and proceed to dissolving the gold in the beaker.

Steve


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## LaurenceOs (Jul 7, 2009)

Ok thanks Steve.

What are these Kovar pins all about? Cos they're taking they're time to dissolve.


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## lazersteve (Jul 7, 2009)

Kovar is an alloy of iron and nickel mostly. It's a real bugger to dissolve.

Steve


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## LaurenceOs (Jul 7, 2009)

Looks to me as i may be waiting for the weekend lol.


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 7, 2009)

Kovar = 54 iron, 28 nickel, 17 cobalt. I seem to remember that this alloy is used because it's expansion rate is the same as the glass that's used in glass-to-metal seals. With a change of temperature, there will be no separation at the seal and, therefore, no leakage. A similar alloy is Invar = 64 iron, 36 nickel. They are both magnetic.


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## glorycloud (Jul 8, 2009)

LaurenceOs - Steve is right. Patience when processing and refining is 
definitely a virtue! By being impatient with the process, I have messed
up my fair share of batches. 8)


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## LaurenceOs (Jul 8, 2009)

Yeah sure. 

Although i can see loads of little glittering gold dust bits in it and quite a few hollow pins floating around, there's a lot of crap in there. Just worried that when i try to clean it of i may lose alot of the gold.

Plus the only coffee filters i can get hold of are conical. I cant seem to find flat, round white ones anywhere.

Laurence


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## qst42know (Jul 8, 2009)

Conical filters should work as long as long as they don't come apart in acids and you can find a suitable funnel to use them with. Decanting may be a better option. Save all that settles to the bottom. Some finely divided gold may be the black mud.


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## LaurenceOs (Jul 9, 2009)

Yeah, i imagine things will look alot better when i clean it with HCl


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## goldrush2009 (Jul 9, 2009)

glory cloud how could you sell someone green cpus they suck hard....poor guy may get 1/2 gr out of them, but sound like he's not!!!


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## LaurenceOs (Jul 10, 2009)

What out of over 400 CPU's?


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## teabone (Jul 10, 2009)

It will be a good learning experience. We can all learn from the different types of cpus and pins what are higher yielding and sometimes the best way to learn is to go thru the processes.
That was a big part of my learning curve(trial and error). Now I try to stick to better quality scrap such as older ceramic chips,fingers,and vintage circuit boards. Gold fill and rolled gold are also good items.
Karat gold,of course is the best,if you can get it at reasonable prices.


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## glorycloud (Jul 10, 2009)

goldrush2009 said:


> glory cloud how could you sell someone green cpus they suck hard....poor guy may get 1/2 gr out of them, but sound like he's not!!!



Thank you for sharing your wisdom with all of us GR2009. I am certain your encouragement has been well received by
all the lucky forum readers who found their way to this thread. As if your 8 posts has earned you the right to comment
on anything! :evil: 

I offered these "s**t" cpu's (as you so creatively named them in your picture), to all the forum members on June 14th before I put them
up for sale on ebay. I sold (450) of them shipped to our new refiner/hobbyist in the UK delivered at $150.00. $50.00 of which
was for the shipping charge. There are (600) on ebay now that will sell for over $220.00 plus shipping of $10.00.
(Item number: 110411202402) You do the math! I could have just as easily and for more $$$ sold them on ebay for the same
price per processor but one of our forum members with a few more posts than 8 helped put the deal together with our friend in the UK. 

Not everyone has access to escrap to process and I sold what I had under market (especially when you consider the
freight charge I underwrote) to help someone get started. Perhaps in the future when you get up to say 20 posts or when 
your forum manners are more cordial then you can share your precious pearls of wisdom with us again.


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## patnor1011 (Jul 10, 2009)

goldrush2009 said:


> glory cloud how could you sell someone green cpus they suck hard....poor guy may get 1/2 gr out of them, but sound like he's not!!!



would you expect us to give them away for free? ... :mrgreen:


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## goldrush2009 (Jul 10, 2009)

Once are friend from the UK get done he may NOT be a friend No More ?


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## butcher (Jul 11, 2009)

gold rush how about you send me any of the cpu's you dont like? I'll process that kind of sh--(stuff)---t no problem, 
its gold.
as long as i can get them at a fair price then I'll process them.


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## LaurenceOs (Jul 11, 2009)

I was well aware they were low yield, i bought them to practise on.


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## LaurenceOs (Jul 11, 2009)

Infact its been a week now and the large majority of the pins are still in tact. Is there anything i can do that can speed up the process?


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## glorycloud (Jul 11, 2009)

I use AP for a day or so just to get the gold pins loose from the CPU. I then take the fiber CPU's out of the bucket and check to be sure all the pins are off. I have just been storing the left over CPU's to process later when I can grind 'em up leach them in AR one day. 

I then filter the AP away, rinse the pins in H20 and then use a small amount of nitric acid to get the gold plating loose from the legs. That takes about a day as well. I wash the legs with water by swirling it around in the bucket. The gold flakes are light so they float away from the legs that are still disolving and I pour them off into a filter. 
When all the gold is out, I just put the leftover legs in with the mixed iron scrap cases and sell to the recycler.


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## LaurenceOs (Jul 15, 2009)

I decided to let it sit for another week lol, i went and checked it today and the ap was purple?!? What's going on chaps?

Loads of pins still sitting in the bottom, i think i may filter it off this saturday and soak it in nitric.


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## glorycloud (Jul 15, 2009)

That's probably the way to go Laurence.


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## LaurenceOs (Jul 22, 2009)

Did the nitric yesterday..... Really should have done it in the first place lol within seconds it had stripped the majority of the pins


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## Oz (Jul 22, 2009)

All things in life cost 1 of 2 things, time or money. The question is, which do you have a surplus of at that moment. Nitric is expensive to use for recovering gold from electronics due to the low gold yield. 

Unless I missed something above...

The good news is the AP saved you on nitric consumption. The bad news is that even if you rinsed your pins well (Harold will tell you about incineration) before putting them in nitric you have made some AR and put some of your gold into solution, most probably re-cemented on the base metals in the pins. Check your solutions very carefully with stannic acid.


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## Harold_V (Jul 22, 2009)

Oz said:


> The good news is the AP saved you on nitric consumption. The bad news is that even if you rinsed your pins well (Harold will tell you about incineration) before putting them in nitric you have made some AR and put some of your gold into solution, most probably re-cemented on the base metals in the pins. Check your solutions very carefully with stannic acid.


While it's true that some AR could have been made, assuming there was a substantial amount of base metal present, it would have precipitated any dissolved gold, so there would be no loss, assuming all of the fine particles in the solution were recovered and processed. 

It's always a good idea to incinerate when going from one acid to another, so you eliminate the potential to dissolve values prematurely. More importantly, it's a good idea to incinerate the values that have been recovered before they are dissolved. So much of the garbage that has the potential to be troublesome is eliminated that it makes the little side trip worth the effort. Furthermore, depending on the nature of the material in question, it may well be where a potential explosive compound is eliminated, assuming one is using nitric acid. 

I heartily endorse incineration in almost all instances.

Harold


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## LaurenceOs (Jul 22, 2009)

Harold, can you elaborate on how we would incinorate, 

I really know very little. What are we incinerating? The filters? and doesn't incineration just add more dirt to the mix?


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## Harold_V (Jul 23, 2009)

LaurenceOs said:


> Harold, can you elaborate on how we would incinorate,
> 
> I really know very little. What are we incinerating? The filters? and doesn't incineration just add more dirt to the mix?


I'm at a loss to know if process of incineration is still a question for you, but let me talk about the benefits. 

When you incinerate, you are adding nothing to the material that isn't already present. What you do is eliminate a great deal of unwanted garbage that can be troublesome. 

Please note that I do NOT recommend that pure gold be incinerated, not unless it is to receive further refining. That could introduce traces of less than desirable contaminants. 

A good example of places where I'd incinerate. The first one would be the dark purple/black values recovered from a stripping cell. There's more than metal involved from that operation, some of it troublesome. By incinerating the material, *along with the filter*, they are eliminated, and all of the values are collected. I would next give the recovered material a boil in dilute nitric acid, rinse, then dissolve with AR, for eventual recovery by precipitation. 

Another example would be the resulting shells of gold from pins and other materials, where the base metal is dissolved, leaving behind the values. Again, there is more there than metal, none of which is desirable. Same thing. Incinerate everything, including the filter, and process in the same way as the other example. 

Incineration is carried out in a shallow pan, such as an old stainless frying pan. Heated from below, you can burn things without loss, although there may be some carried off in the smoke. It is for that reason I used a filtered fume hood, from which I recovered a considerable amount of gold. Do keep in mind, I processed thousands of ounces of gold, not just a few ounces as is typical of the average e scrap processor. 

Does this help? If not, please ask specific questions and I'll try to address them to the best of my ability.

Harold


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## plamenppp (Dec 20, 2009)

LaurenceOs, I will fallow your example with a test number of identical cpus  If you want to speed up the process a little mechanically you can do the same I did. I've just kocked down the pins of the green/brown fiber cpus with the "mighty" paper knife. After 10 minutes of practice I was an expert. I was knocking them down row by row. A green fiber cpus takes about 2-3 minutes. The only thing you have to do is "push hard" the base of the top one pin and you will slide the knife down the row. 
Do this in a bucket or at a corner of a room because the pins will fly all over the place. You can collect them with a small and not very strong magnet. You will have to wait no more the pins to fall and you will use less acid. Unfortunatelly, you will have to spend some time  Look carefully if some of the pins are not cut completely. If so - remove them with the parer knife gently (5-10 "bases" always remain). I hope I have helped you a little


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