# Tried to get out gold from chips, RAM etc.



## archeonist (Jul 5, 2012)

Well hello everybody. My name is Erwin and I am from the Netherlands. I'm almost a teacher in chemistry at a Highscool and I was trying to look for something interesting in relation to chemistry. Well I have found something with this board!!

I already did a bit of quick experimenting with some cpu's and I collected real gold!! Man this is very addictive!!

Yesterday I read patnor1011's topic in wich he says and shows how you can get the gold out of computerchips other than cpu's. So all chips that you can find on the motherboard, the RAM chips and other. By the way here is the link of how this is done: 
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827&hilit=smb+selective&start=20

I have tried his method and I must say I was a little sceptic during the whole process. After I crushed the chips into powder and panned it, I could not really see the gold. I dit saw a lot of litlle wires and things and I seperated the magnetic ones with a magnet (indeed from an old harddisc). After this separation I desided to just put the left over (the nonmagnetic metal and left over powder) in AR. A lot of nitrous gas was produced, so that was a clear signal that there was a lot metal left over in the powder.

After the AR I diluted the solution with a bit of water and run it over a filter. The filtrate was a clear green solution. At this moment I started to be a bit less sceptic because it could be a mixture of blue (copper) and yellow (gold!!).

The last step was putting the SMB into the green solution and wait. After a few minutes the color changed and little black/brown particles snowed out of the solution. I know from my first experiment that this is real gold! Yet still a bit contaminated, but it is gold. Next step will be smelting the gold, these pics I will add when I have done so.

For now, I must say many thanks to patnor1011 for sharing his information on how to get the gold out of these chips! 

Almost forgot to tell: this was a run of 102 grams of chips and I lost a lot of gold during the whole process, I am still learning and over time it will be better.

Sorry for my terrible english :lol:


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## maynman1751 (Jul 5, 2012)

Good for you and welcome aboard. That method has been dubbed the Patnor Method. That guy knows his stuff. By the way, your English is excellent. Better than some of the natural Americans here! :lol:


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## joem (Jul 5, 2012)

I love seeing things like this in action.
Patnor's Method, eh? hmmm. Is there a guide for this???? lol


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## archeonist (Jul 6, 2012)

maynman1751 said:


> Good for you and welcome aboard. That method has been dubbed the Patnor Method. That guy knows his stuff. By the way, your English is excellent. Better than some of the natural Americans here! :lol:



Haha, well thank you! This Patnor method is really interesting because it is very difficult to distinguish the gold from the other compounds, but all in the end you end up with gold :shock: 

@joem, just click the link in my post, it takes you to the post of Patnor101, and if you read it you'll find a link to a pdf file where this method is explained. If you are planning to try it remember not to breathe the dust from the crushed chips. I did my experiment fully in a fume hood but I noticed very fine dust was released when I was crushing the chips. This dust isn't healthy for your longs (all dust isn't) and because I don't know the composition of the particles I don't know how unhealthy this stuff is. Maybe there are also some heavy metals in it (if not vaporised) so that's not healthy too :lol: But if you take all precautions there really isn't a problem :!:


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## maynman1751 (Jul 6, 2012)

joem said:


> I love seeing things like this in action.
> Patnor's Method, eh? hmmm. Is there a guide for this???? lol



Excuse me, I was incorrect. It's the Patnor Process not Method! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:


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## patnor1011 (Jul 6, 2012)

Hehe... I see my nick mentioned often so I have to react.

First to OP - Your batch is very small to see much of gold. If you will do bigger batch at least a kilogram of chips then you will see gold being accumulated during panning. Yes, non magnetic pins are pain in the **** to deal with as if you crush material with many of them still present this will result on gold bonding wires being smeared on pins. But that is not problem as this gold can be easily recovered. I suggest to use straight nitric first, then incinerate again and wash with hot water, carefully, leave everything to settle pour off wash water and then use AR.
I would say that most of your precipitate is not gold at all. From picture and provided weight I would estimate that you will have about 0.2 - 0,4 (maybe even 0,5 as I see some intel chips inside) but lets say I would expect no more than 0.3g.
Generally mixed chips like you have on pictures yield about 2-3g from kilo from my experience and I like to think I manage to squeeze all gold out of them.
Do not melt your powder. Incinerate first. Use torch and heat it little bit, play with flame around while stirring it. After that put it in straight nitric, you can even heat it little bit but it is not necessary. Your solution will be green or blue again. You will see most of powder dissolve. Leave to settle, decant and test decanted solution. If you incinerated properly your solution will not test positive and will not contain gold. Your gold cca 0.2-3g will be in sediment which was not dissolved in nitric. Use AR, filter well, SMB, then proper washing of powder and then you can melt. It seems like too much of work for not much of gold, but that will help you to get a grip on process, and do everything correctly when you will process bigger amounts of material. 


Joem - yes there is a guide in form of downloadable pdf (only few pages but a lot of pictures) which I gave to all forum members free of charge. I do sell this guide on ebay too but so far proceeds from sale were divided and half donated to forum and half to one member who was helping to a person in need.


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## patnor1011 (Jul 6, 2012)

To prevent forming of dust you can crush incinerated material under water, leave settle from time to time, decant and put in fresh water.


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## joem (Jul 6, 2012)

archeonist said:


> maynman1751 said:
> 
> 
> > Good for you and welcome aboard. That method has been dubbed the Patnor Method. That guy knows his stuff. By the way, your English is excellent. Better than some of the natural Americans here! :lol:
> ...



I know, I've read it. I was just playing up making another illustrated guide with his method as a joke, uh sort of, yeah joking that's it yeah. The first guide was long enough. For Now. :lol:


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