# CPU collection lot 2



## kjavanb123 (Jun 24, 2012)

All,

Just to post my second lot of CPUs. Here is the picture of the whole lot.



and the following is the break down of how many pieces there is

intermediate type CPUs
18 pieces total ( 9 Intel Pentium MMXs, and 9 Intel Celeron )

fiber type CPUs
23 pieces total.

ceramic type CPUs
23 pieces total

the lot weight is 1360 grams. So I decided to process the fiber type CPUs first, then intermediate ones follow by the ceramic types. From what I learned in lot 1, and reading Samuel site, and Steve's, I remove the MMCs from the fiber chips, then leach the remain in dilute nitric to take care of pins and kovar, rinse and decant till I get to AR the remain for gold. Can I follow the same procedures for ceramic type CPUs? or Intermediate type?

I paid $140 for this lot.

Thanks 
Kevin


----------



## jimdoc (Jun 24, 2012)

Sorry to say, but I don't see $140 worth there.

Have you ever check what buyers are paying?
Like;
http://boardsort.com/payout.php
Or;
http://thriftybits.com/

Jim


----------



## NobleMetalWorks (Jun 24, 2012)

If I were you...

I would collect a few more CPU's then throw it back up on eBay and sell them, unless you can afford the $140.00 education. When I first started I made the mistake of believing CPU's had a lot more in them, than they actually do. I bought a large quantity of ceramic CPU's, hundreds of which were Pentium Pro's. You can imagine my disappointment when the yields were nothing what I expected. I didn't loose money, because I'm cheap and try to get everything for as cheap as possible (unless quality is an issue), but I didn't get the yield I was expecting. If I were not as cheap as I am, and paid more for the material than I should have, I could have lost a lot of money on the lot. If I knew what I know now, I would have put up the Pentium Pro's to sell, all the other mid range CPU's and only processed the very best yields because still, even now, you can get more for a lb of mixed CPU's with no double gold caps, than you can process and yield in precious metals.

Scott


----------



## kjavanb123 (Jun 24, 2012)

Hmm, 

So you basically saying, none of these CPUs yield profit? If that is the case why are they being traded? It's more education to me. My last lot , it yielded 2.56 grams of pure gold, but I know since it was my very first experience on CPU recoveries I must have lost some of the gold during the process, and with that loss gold it would have been a profitable project.
That is why I try this set of CPUs separately, and I wonder what pros do when processing them? Separate them based on their types fiber, intermediate and ceramic then process them? mix them all together??

I checked the prices and it is reasonable.

Regards,
Kevin


----------



## NobleMetalWorks (Jun 24, 2012)

In your recovery process, the first step is breaking down the material into a form that is more easily processed to recover values. In doing that, you end up with a natural separation. If you used the heat gun/torch method to shake the pins off the fiber CPU's, then that probably means you are going to process them differently than you would crushed up ceramic CPU's.

Once you recover the gold, then you can decide if you want to refine the different material you recovered, together or not. Anytime I have one thing that is a cleaner material than another, I try to keep them separate. I try to keep to my belief that each step of my process, in either recovering or refining, should either maintain the quality of my solution, or improve it. To that end, I do not mix a dirty recovery with a clean recovery to refine in AR.

You have over 400 posts, can I assume you have read Hoke, and seen video's on how to recover PMs from different types of CPU scrap?

Scott


----------



## kjavanb123 (Jun 24, 2012)

Scott,

As for Hoke's and educational videos, I have read and watched them, and completed PGM refining from catalyst converters. This is going to be my 2nd test every with regards to CPUs and later on with boards. There was some confusion about how to proceed, on Samuel video, he leached everything in poor man's AR, separate silver and lead then drop the gold using SMB. Steve suggested in response to my message to remove the base metals with nitric then proceed AR the gold. So I was testing these two methods and that kinda of raised a lot of questions and handling.

One of the objective of me sharing these with pictures is to have a collection of pros comments on my process so others might just read this post and don't make anymore mistakes.

I am trying the fiber type CPUs right now.

Regards,
Kevin


----------



## stardust18 (Jun 24, 2012)

kjavanb123 said:


> All,
> 
> Just to post my second lot of CPUs. Here is the picture of the whole lot.
> 
> ...



Hi, Kevin. From my experience: green processors (fiber) give about 35 grams of gold in 1000, intermediate (brown, black) give about 50 grams of gold in 1000, ceramic (not gold-plated lid on top) give approximately 100 grams of gold per 1,000 pieces, ceramic (with gold caps on top) yield about 180 grams of gold in 1000. Your solution: 18 * 23 * 0.035 * 0.050 23 0.18 (0,1) = 0.63 1.15 4.14 (2,3) = 5.92, or 3.93 grams of gold. And this is ideal. To this add the cost of recycling. On this very expensive $ 140 for processing. This is my humble opinion.


----------



## ericrm (Jun 24, 2012)

hey stardust18
your <experience> looklike a lot a certain list number, did you actualy process anything ?


----------



## kjavanb123 (Jun 24, 2012)

Filtering takes a while, as i have done the nitric leach to remove the base metals including silver and lead from the Fiber CPUs set. Once that is through, I have to clean with water till the filtered materials are clean. Then AR leach them, filter, follow by SMB or copperas precipitation.

Since during rinsing I use water, do I need to make a saturated SMB or copperas solution?

Here are some pics
Fiber CPUs of this lot, cut into small pieces using garden scissor, and 2 of the lids had gold plates so they were added to the batch,



Dilute nitric leach reacting at room temperature, after an hr most of the pins were removed and dissolved and gold foils floating, but had to heat the solution
to completely remove the remaining pins



After no more reaction by adding nitric to the batch, the solution filtered, and the gray residue at the bottom of batch is added at the end, this filtering takes a while to go through so vacuum filtering is better choice.



The grayish residue undissolved from nitric leach along with remaining gold foils are added at the end to the filter,



and finally fiber CPUs after being rinsed clean and went through nitric leach




Regards,
Kevin


----------



## patnor1011 (Jun 24, 2012)

kjavanb123 said:


> One of the objective of me sharing these with pictures is to have a collection of pros comments on my process so others might just read this post and don't make anymore mistakes.



You do not need to ask pros to comment on your processes mainly not on these basic simple ones and countless times discussed over and over like ceramic or fiber cpus.
All you need to do to prevent any mistakes is to search on forum and read a little bit. Forgive me but even if you will do some mistake you can correct that just by reading older posts about processing fiber cpu.



kjavanb123 said:


> I am trying the fiber type CPUs right now.



This was discussed so much that creating another discussion is counter productive as it just clutter forum.


----------



## kjavanb123 (Jun 26, 2012)

Patnor,

Well noted on your comments. I won't bother the forum with redundancy anymore, Just wanted to share, that nitric leaching the intermediate type of CPUs won't work as it doesn't react at room temperature, but will work at near boiling point, still after the nitric leach some pins stay on the CPUs and some of the gold foils free, but after water washing and decanting, I added hcl and heat gently, still dissolved some base metals and freed some gold foils, but not all, so I repeated till hcl addition didn't make any color change, so I filtered, then dissolved the remain in AR, it's cooling as of now, will post more updates soon.

Regards,
Kevin


----------



## kjavanb123 (Jun 26, 2012)

Ok I gave up on refining, I don't know what happened, with last lot, I did produce a pure fold button, but this lot so far I have processed 23 fiber type chips could see the darn gold foils floating during nitric leach but after addition of Hcl nothing showed in standouts, nothing....absolutely no signs of gold.
Tried 18 intermediate types and also got nothing, I see gold foils and pins but after AR leash, nothing shows. In solution and nothing is visible in the residue.
That's is it for me snd whole refining, best of it to you guys , and thanks a lot for those of you who have helped me trying to learn and understand the recovery. And refining of precious metals,

Regards,
Kevin


----------



## goldenchild (Jun 26, 2012)

kjavanb123,

With 18 modern cpus you might as well say there is no gold on them. The amount of gold on them is so minute that after precipitation you won't see the gold. It will be floating around in solution as an ultra fine dust. If you were to let the solution settle for 12 to 24 hours you would see a thin, and I mean very thin layer of gold at the bottom. You were probably expecting to see a bunch of brown powder appear and then settle but with those cpus at that quantity it won't happen. We can't stop you if you want to give up but maybe you simply need to find a different source of scrap.


----------



## kjavanb123 (Jun 26, 2012)

It is not just those, whatever procedure I used before simply doesn't work with even gold lid ones, I tried one last time a gold lid in ar leach, tested positive for gold, stannous result was dark purple, filtered the solution, made a saturated copperas solution, kept adding it ar solution, it would go black then immediately foamed up and produced brown fumes, I repeated this till no more brown fumes, added one last few drops of saturated copperas, solution turned dark and negative for gold, waited for two hrs, and only a grayish precipitation at the bottom, decant, boiled the gray mud with water 4x, still not clear. This is frustrating because I have done this before, now no success at all, there suppose to be improvement not going back to square one.

Thanks again
Kevin


----------



## goldenchild (Jun 26, 2012)

I think for any e-scrap besides gold fingers AR is a poor choice. And some will even say that AR is a poor choice for fingers. Unless you use a cyanide leach I don't think there is a feasible one step process for cpus. Usually it’s a 2-3 and maybe even 4 step process as far as cpus go usually involving isolating the pins and processing the lids separately. Have you seen Samuel's videos?

http://goldnscrap.com/index.php?opt...fiber-cpu&catid=36:scrap-cpu-a-chips&Itemid=2 

There is a video of processing ceramic cpus somewhere also.


----------



## ericrm (Jun 26, 2012)

kjavanb123 said:


> It is not just those, whatever procedure I used before simply doesn't work with even gold lid ones, I tried one last time a gold lid in ar leach, tested positive for gold, stannous result was dark purple, filtered the solution, made a saturated copperas solution, kept adding it ar solution, it would go black then immediately foamed up and produced brown fumes, I repeated this till no more brown fumes, added one last few drops of saturated copperas, solution turned dark and negative for gold, waited for two hrs, and only a grayish precipitation at the bottom, decant, boiled the gray mud with water 4x, still not clear. This is frustrating because I have done this before, now no success at all, there suppose to be improvement not going back to square one.
> 
> Thanks again
> Kevin




this is why you should denox you solution *before precipitating*

this is also why i dont like AR ,well i use it but with all the church word i know ... i always endup lossing gold....anyway

you should go back to read in the forum ... treat the covar pin with samuel methode ,it works fine
treat cpu with eater hcl (AP) or nitric acid but not both in the same time ,or at least until you realyse that chemistry is a scien that need to be learned
i think harold once told that he could make a monkey refine but YOUR AND I are monkey without a harold ,we need to LEARN to do those thing . i have been reading here for 1 years and still have so much difficulty ,shame is on my head to suck that bad after a years but i will continue to learn ,and so should you....


----------



## Barren Realms 007 (Jun 26, 2012)

Patience, patience & patience + attention to detail= Success


----------



## kjavanb123 (Jun 28, 2012)

Interesting points,

This is the last try on processing ceramic CPUs, tried this VIA ceramic CPU without gold lids, broke it into 4 pieces put it in Hcl, heat it up, I added nitric in 10ml increments till the reaction started, color turned dark green, tested with stannous negative for gold, decant the green solution, then added fresh hcl, and heat up, added 10ml of nitric this time the color turned dark yellow as you can see from the filter below, tested positive for gold.



After this I warmed up filtered solution, and added few granules of Urea, it foamed up a little bit, no BROWN fumes though, and the color of solution changed into dark green as picture below,



So thinking there is no free nitric in the solution, I added 1 gram of copperas to 20ml of water, and boiled, then let it back to room temperature, added that to the solution, it foamed up again, but no signs of brown fumes, I kept adding till no more foaming took place, I let it sit there right now, solution tested negative for gold.

Here is what solution looks like right now after copperas addition



These are ceramic VIA CPU left overs



I am sure total of 20ml nitric was added to complete the process of this CPU, maybe it was copper in solution somewhat reacted wth Urea, this is messed up.

Regards,
Kevin


----------



## Barren Realms 007 (Jun 28, 2012)

kjavanb123 said:


> this is messed up.
> 
> Regards,
> Kevin




No Kevin it is called an education. And you are getting one by baptisim of fire.


----------



## goldenchild (Jun 28, 2012)

kjavanb123 said:


> After this I warmed up filtered solution, and added few granules of Urea, it foamed up a little bit, no BROWN fumes though, and the color of solution changed into dark green as picture below,
> 
> So thinking there is no free nitric in the solution, I added 1 gram of copperas to 20ml of water, and boiled, then let it back to room temperature, added that to the solution, it foamed up again, but no signs of brown fumes, I kept adding till no more foaming took place, I let it sit there right now, solution tested negative for gold.
> 
> I am sure total of 20ml nitric was added to complete the process of this CPU, maybe it was copper in solution somewhat reacted wth Urea, this is messed up.




If you use urea boiling the solution after the additions defeats the purpose. You will boil off the urea and make the nitric useable once more. You will put any precipitated gold right back into solution. I've done it before. At this point all I can offer is this

1. Isolate the pins and lids from the cpus
a. if fiber cpus use a torch to remove pins
b. if ceramic cpus use HCL or nitric(HCL removes tin)

2. After isolating the pins remove base metals (most likely kovar) with nitric or HCL

3. After recovering the foils from the pins place the foils in a vessel with fresh HCL
a. add nitric literally by the drop as the foils won’t need much AR *OR* add H2O2(recommended) to digest foils

4. After there is no more nitric or H2O2 in solution chill with ice

5. Filter solution extremely well while still cold

6. Add SMB (dry) in small increments to precipitate

7. Let settle for a few hours

8. Process lids in an H2SO4 cell


----------



## gold4mike (Jun 28, 2012)

Goldenchild is exactly right when he says to add nitric acid literally by the drop.

You will be amazed at how little nitric it takes when you are dissolving foils.

Early on in my education here I learned of and started using Harold's method of putting a small button of gold in my beaker to use up excess nitric. When I first started doing that I found I was dissolving as much as 1/2 gram of gold to kill the nitric.

I switched to using an eyedropper to add nitric, and using medium heat on my hotplate. If all activity stops and you have just a bit of gold left to dissolve, add one drop and wait a few minutes. Repeat this process until your gold is dissolved and you won't have any problem getting it to precipitate.

Using the proper amount of nitric is much better and less time consuming than trying to kill the excess.


----------



## kjavanb123 (Jun 29, 2012)

All,

My problem now is the dark green solution left that shows no sign of gold anymore after addition of copperas.

No sings of brown powder, is there anything to recover the gold...?

Regards
Kevin


----------



## samuel-a (Jun 29, 2012)

Kev

Do you have SMB ?


----------



## kjavanb123 (Jun 30, 2012)

Samuel

Yes, should I use smb?

Regards
Kevin


----------



## Barren Realms 007 (Jun 30, 2012)

kjavanb123 said:


> Samuel
> 
> Yes, should I use smb?
> 
> ...



If it is your 1st recovery and there are a lot of base metals involved I would ues copperas. If it is the 2nd refining and your material is fairly clean I would use SMB.


----------



## kjavanb123 (Jul 2, 2012)

Some updates on this project, after processing 2 IBM ceramic CPUs and 4 VIA CPUs all gold lid, in AR with minimal amount of nitric, and produced 0.46 grams of purified of gold powder. So this is 0.46 / 6 = 0.076 grams of pure gold powder in each of these CPUs. Is this normal?

Also, I. Processed the remaining INtel CPUs got 0.92 grams of pure gold.


Thanks
Kevin


----------

