# Aurubis Tech Process



## siddharta (Sep 23, 2012)

http://youtu.be/Jn7oNH2-nqc

I saw this video. Sorry I can't embed video.

Do anyone knows exact technological process after grinding and separating metals? I know that they cast plates and refine them with electrolysis.

Are they smelting boards with metals or how do they do it? And what about other metals that are in the plates?

Best regards,

Boris


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## grance (Sep 23, 2012)

I have casted some copper and it seem that when there is junk like plasic and fiberglass they burn ash and float to the top you scrape it off. the other metals is why they use the electro then they end up with 99.9% the other metals endup as a nasty sluge type stuff they dry and process. I have only casted copper wire and pipe allumium (no cans) and some brass most of the metal i cast is pretty clean


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## siddharta (Sep 23, 2012)

So in theory would it be possible to grind CPUs and boards, incinerate them, pour metal into casts and electro them?

Just thinking...


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## Marcel (Sep 23, 2012)

siddharta said:


> So in theory would it be possible to grind CPUs and boards, incinerate them, pour metal into casts and electro them?
> 
> Just thinking...



This what they do in a big scale factory. I have seen it from a handy recycling company. 98% of the metal is copper. 
But before that, they seperate plastic and iron.


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## siddharta (Sep 23, 2012)

I was wondering how many tons should you process to be this kind of facility economically viable.

I am thinking to set up small scale (up to 1 ton per month) recycling and refining facility... Like a very tiny tiny replica of Aurubis. Of course I will start with few pounds, but I really believe that I found something, that I would like to participate in. I was always leaned towards ecology and since I remember, I love to use my hands. So... I would really love to make living from it. And modern age gold fewer caught me too. 

But the fact is, that only in this forum is so much informations that my head will explode.  And I really don't want to get ahead of time with things. As I usually do.

So guys, every bit of help or informations would be much appreciated.

Boris


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## samuel-a (Sep 24, 2012)

siddharta said:


> I was wondering how many tons should you process to be this kind of facility economically viable.



Probably several tonnes a day....


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## goldsilverpro (Sep 25, 2012)

I've worked for several very large refineries that incinerated the boards. There is no need to grind them first. Here's the general process. It's been awhile since I was involved in this but I would guess nothing much has changed.

Remove the aluminum and steel.

Incinerate to ash.

Ball mill to break up the ash.

Screen with a 10-12 mesh screen. The ash goes through the screen and most of the metal stays on top.

Melt the metals in a gas furnace, usually. If there is too much iron and nickel to melt them, additional copper is added to reduce the melting point.

Drill sample and fire assay the bars (called refiner's bars in the trade).

Thief sample and fire assay the ash (called pulps in the trade).

Ship both fractions to a primary copper smelter - usually in Europe.

Get settlements in about 3 months. You can get advances but you pay interest.

The copper usually runs about 65-75%. With certain fees, they pay for the PMs and copper, very honestly. You pay a penalty for certain metals if they are too high. For example, nickel was penalized over 5%. They used to require a ton or two of bars before they would talk to you. Boliden was one of the main smelters we shipped to in Europe.


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## siddharta (Sep 27, 2012)

How about if you do that;

Incinerate and process as you wrote. But instead of pouring bars, you pour molds and put them into electro. One for coper, one for silver and one for gold.

Other metals like platinum and palladium that are in the mix... Extract them and refine it. How I don't have a clue. AR maybe...

Everything else goes to waste...

But yeah, like Sam wrote... Severals tons per day... :S


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## butcher (Sep 27, 2012)

I do not think you understood the details in that video, or what GSP has said.

If the melted bars of metal were 96 to 98% pure you could refine them in an cell to higher purity.

If you just melted all of the metals in a bar and tried to refine in a cell you would just have a mess.

Burning circuit boards without proper afterburners and ash filtering will kill you and your neighbors, if they do not put you in jail before this.

The process for industry which incinerates the circuit boards is heavily regulated, as these fumes are extremely toxic.


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## siddharta (Sep 27, 2012)

You're right. I don't understand whole process... That' why I am asking so much questions that for someone who knows seems to be idiotic. As I said, I am interested how do they do it...
There's so much questions in my head rigt know... 
But I will stick with AR for the time beeing. Maybe in another life.  
One more question. How do they process metals after incineration to achieve 98% purity? With separator?


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## goldsilverpro (Sep 27, 2012)

> Incinerate and process as you wrote. But instead of pouring bars, you pour molds and put them into electro. One for coper, one for silver and one for gold.


That sounds familiar. Did you get this from a certain, very misleading, oversimplified, youtube video? If it's the one I am thinking of, they didn't tell you that, for each of these 3 metals, the residues were treated and re-melted and put through cells using different electrolytes. Pretty standard stuff for about 100-150 years although much more involved than that video indicates. In general: Copper sulfate cell - Thum or Moebius silver cell - Wohlwill gold cell.



> One more question. How do they process metals after incineration to achieve 98% purity? With separator?


Most all of the refiner's bars and pulps go to a primary copper smelter/refiner, usually in Europe. They remelt and assay the bars very completely. This assay is what is used to settle with the customer and it also tells them what, if any, pre-treatment is needed. The bars are then blended in with the smelter's normal flow of material from the ore they are processing. Even though the makeup of the bars is somewhat different than the copper from the ore, it creates little problems since the refiner's bars are a drop-in-the-bucket, weight-wise, compared to the the amount of impure copper (from ore) they are blending it with. There are some problem metals that probably must first be removed or at least considered, like nickel. That's why you're penalized for it. I don't know exactly how they process the pulps (which always contain PMs), but it surely involves flux melting.

I only know of one instance in the US where a refiner processed refiner's bars. They used weak sulfuric electrolytically, using a commercial anodic membrane to separate the anode and cathode compartments, thus preventing the dissolved metal from depositing on the cathode. The result was a copper (and other base metal) sulfate solution and a solid residue containing the gold, silver, lead sulfate, etc. The PMs were treated conventionally and the copper, etc., was cemented from the solution using scrap iron. There are a lot more details to this, depending on the metals involved and their amounts, but that is the general idea.

I might mention that, in more recent years, grinding and mechanical separation is slowly replacing the incineration method of electronic scrap. Much greener. The main innovator in this is ECS in California. They use such things as magnetic separation, eddy-current, flotation, etc., to separate all the different fractions, most of which have value.


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## siddharta (Sep 27, 2012)

Yes I saw it on youtube.  First thing that popped into my mind is that they grind, separate, smelt and refine... 

I have found Italian company that offers turn key refining solution. It looks something like that.

http://goldmachinery.com/machinery/i-waste.htm

Now I have a little clearer view of this process.


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