# Pyrolize quads chips in assay furnace?



## 924T (Sep 22, 2012)

In a bid to duplicate the Patnor Process, I just searched for a coal supplier in my town, and found there
is none. The closest place to get coal here is 2.5 hours away; I did discover that they sell coke, too.

Aside from the inevitable complaints by my neighbors about "what's that smell" from burning coal, I have no place
to store a ton of coal (which is how it's sold around here), and charcoal is only available during the summer
cookout season.

So, I'm wondering if quads and BGA chips could be pyrolized in an assay furnace? 

I've got 2 110v furnaces (although my small Vcella needs a new heating element), so if using a furnace will
work, I won't have to go out and buy anything to be able to conduct some pyrolizing experiments.

Cheers,

Mike


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## Geo (Sep 22, 2012)

there are alternatives. natural gas,propane and scrap wood to name a few.


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## 924T (Sep 23, 2012)

Thanks, Geo!

I had just assumed that coal produced more heat than charcoal or wood, so it's interesting to find out
that scrap wood, which is plentiful here, would work.

Is there an optimum temperature to aim for, to properly pyrolize i.c. chips?

Cheers,

Mike


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## Geo (Sep 23, 2012)

the organic plastic bodies should decompose to ash at around 620 - 980 Fahrenheit. with a little engineering, wood will burn twice this hot if given enough oxygen.


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## 924T (Sep 25, 2012)

Thanks, Geo.

I imagine a very small squirrel-cage fan, or a blow dryer, would provide enough Oxygen to get a wood
fire up to around 900F ?

Cheers,

Mike


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## Geo (Sep 25, 2012)

i use a Dollar General brand hair drier.


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## 924T (Oct 3, 2012)

Geo,

Just found out today that if you hit burning wood with enough air, it will easily generate 850F,
and that's in the temperature range you indicated, so I'm going to go with wood.

Not sure if I should pursue old/broken pallets (which I'd heard were made of oak), or help myself
to the fallen tree limbs so common here.

Cheers,

Mike


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## element47.5 (Oct 3, 2012)

> i use a Dollar General brand hair drier.



Quote of the year, LOL!


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## grance (Oct 3, 2012)

I use wood pellets in my smelting furnace they work very well and theres a local saw mill that turns there saw dust into them so there cheap


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## acpeacemaker (Oct 3, 2012)

Speaking of mills there are several where I live. They mill wood flooring and leave huge piles out in the parking lot for free. Oak burns a hot dry heat, which is what use. Also, I was speaking to a wood craftsmen that told me red oak or red cedar will cause nasal cancer just from the dust. I don't remember which one.


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## goldsilverpro (Oct 3, 2012)

As I understand it, to pyrolyze means to apply heat to vaporize the organics in the absence of oxygen, leaving the carbon unreacted upon. Incineration means to burn the material in the presence of oxygen, resulting in a white ash with no black carbon remaining. In this case, you want to incinerate and not to pyrolyze. You definitely want to get rid of the carbon.


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## 924T (Oct 4, 2012)

goldsilverpro,

I was wondering about that------------pyrolosis is what's done, and correct me if I'm wrong, when they
remove all organic material from wood, coal, or peanut or coconut shells (etc.) to make activated carbon.

So if what's being done to the I.C. chips is actually incineration, the chips could be put in a pan with no lid 
(simply to keep the chip ashes and values from combining with the fuel ashes if you're using wood, coal, charcoal, etc.),
which would expose them to Oxygen,placed over a 620-980F heat source, and they would incinerate?

Cheers,

Mike


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## goldsilverpro (Oct 4, 2012)

Right. Charcoal, activated carbon, etc. is made by pyrolysis. Pyrolysis can pose an explosion problem if the vapors coming off are confined. If there is even a slight leak of air into the chamber holding the hot confined off-gases, the temperature can raise quickly and an explosion can occur. A guy I knew was going to get rich by pyrolyzing tires. He had backers and a fairly large experimental setup. His idea was to condense the vapors and produce oil. He claimed to get a drum of oil, a lot of carbon black, and steel (from steel belted radials) from a ton of tires. He had about an explosion a week and some were fairly large. Every time I saw him, he was covered from head to foot with carbon.


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## 924T (Oct 4, 2012)

I just started the search for a clean 55 gallon steel drum today----------It looks to be the solution to
my concerns about being able to incinerate I.C. chips outdoors during the winter months here.

I saw the Elastec company mentioned in a different post; I went to their website and checked out
their products, because they fit 55 gal. drums. Their products look to be very well made, but
$2,730 for a drum lid with a blower pack is out of my price range right now. There were some pictures of
their units being operated in the winter, which prompted me to begin sourcing a 55 gal. drum.

Geo, the Dollar General blow dryers are looking more appealing every day, and will probably become
the forced air source for my 55 gallon incinerator.

This, for me, is a fun project.

Thanks for all your answers and help, good people of the GRF!

Cheers,

Mike


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## malfeces (Oct 5, 2012)

55 gal drum for incinerating? How many chips you got? I am new and an idiot to boot so don't take anything i say as the best advice but after the hours of reading I have done and many many videos if this process, I think if you release your inner MacGuyver you can creat something that will do the trick for way less money. I would think for around $50 you could set yourself up with some fire brick, the dollar general hair dryer, maybe an iron pipe to direct the air into the base of the brick furnace and a cast iron pan and you should be good as gold.....heheheh....gold.....


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## acpeacemaker (Oct 5, 2012)

I've actually found over the summer that smaller is better for me. I've tried close to a 55' and the amount of ash can be somewhat overwhelming. If you do a process simalar to Pat's process, I found 1 lb lots to be way easier. Plus when you go through your first pan you can put the ash in a 10 inch cast iron skillet. I use a mini oven and dry it back out. Then mill the remaining ash with the back of a blunt axe head right in the pan. Then the ash gets sprayed into a 1 gallon wide mouthed pitcher and cleaned, then put back into the gold pan. I've found a lot of gold still trapped in the ash from the first go around.


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## DONNZ (Oct 5, 2012)

Scrap yards that allow bone picking and some metal yards have bone piles.

Useful things I've collected.


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## 924T (Oct 5, 2012)

Thanks, malfeces!

Yeah, I was getting a little goofy there with the 55 gallon drum idea----------after thinking about it,
I became certain the uptight neighbors here would be freaking out if I had a large steel drum in the
back yard with flames shooting out the top.

I don't have that many chips, yet. I've been chiseling chips off of motherboards for 3 weeks now, and
have 4 40 oz. Skippy peanut butter jars nearly full; 1 is very close to a Kg, the other 3 are in the 
750-850 gram range. I've got maybe another 120 motherboards to go, and then it's on to the PCI
cards, then the floppy/hard drive/CD-DVD boards, then the ram chips. I'm hoping to have 5 to 8 Kg of chips when I'm done.

I'm separating the dual inline I.C.'s from the quads, the large quads from the small quads, and the 
Northbridge chips from the Southbridge and video chips, and I'd like to end up with at least a Kg of each
grouping, so that I can record the pyrolysis outcomes and compare them. I'm curious to find out if the
small quads have the same yield as the large quads, etc., because I hope to start buying chips after I
gain some competency with the pyrolizing process, and I do want to get the pricing correct, and fair.

Or maybe it's better to just lump them all into a pile and run them that way-----I don't know yet.

Somewhere around here there is a stainless steel stockpot that I think I could turn into a small incinerator.
Normally I don't try making equipment because I'm a mechanical dolt-----my brother got all the mechanical
skills, it seems. My skill areas are in marketing and communications, but I'm thinking I can get past that
obstacle, with all the ideas and input available from the forum.

Any and all ideas are very much appreciated!

Cheers,

Mike


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## 924T (Oct 5, 2012)

Thanks, acpeacemaker!

You've told me something that I absolutely did not know, which is to keep the "batch" size to around 1 lb.,
to keep things manageable, and the fact that you have already been there, done that, with the 55 gal. drum
approach makes the information all that much more meaningful to me-------many thanks.

You said that you dry the ash out in a mini oven------------that would be after panning the Au out of the
pyrolized chip remnants, so the ash would be wet from the water from the panning process?

That's a cool idea to 'mill' the dried ash in the iron pan with the back of an axe head. It sounds like you've
got your process well optimized.

If I screw this up, royally, is there a chance I could drive to Springfield and watch you actually running a
batch of chips, and what would you charge for such an observational tutorial?

Cheers,

Mike


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## 924T (Oct 5, 2012)

DONNZ,

It looks like you've found some cool stuff and came up with novel uses for it/them-----------I like it!

The one scrap yard I've frequented locally won't let loose of a thing-----sell, trade, nothing.

There's another one that I'll have to hit, and find out what their policies are.

I'd bet it's some sort of insurance/liability thing dictating the policies.

Cheers,

Mike


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## DONNZ (Oct 5, 2012)

I got bored. 
So, from start to finish about 20 minutes including the plumbing for the hair drier:

Pics not in order but you can get the idea. Once lit bigger wood and hair drier for air. Can add container into the top. Two tin cans and willow branches = drawing charcoal.


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## acpeacemaker (Oct 5, 2012)

Hey,

Yeah, the so called second hand ash gets dried out and milled again. A lot of times the wires get locked up in the granules. The second mill is generally easier than the first. The first mill i use a mesh strainer, and strain it into my pitcher. Then use a magnet to pick up most of the legs and other junk. 

Don't forget swirling some soap in is a big key when pouring off the ash. What I did with some testing was got a bunch of 44 oz tumblers you get from the gas station. Lined them up, and poured the ash in each one, in steps. Most of the time my gold wires stayed in the pitcher, but I panned each cup to see if I was losing any values. Some might say the second milling is not needed and move onto ar. But I like recovering the wires as they are. You can pick up some of those mini ovens from dollar store as well. Some will get up to 500 degrees. I hope some of this helps.

:mrgreen: How far away is Rock Island?

Best wishes,
Andrew


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## 924T (Oct 6, 2012)

acpeacemaker,

I just hit Mapquest, and it said I'm about 480 miles away (a bit farther than I had anticipated), in Rock Island, IL.

I like that innovation of progressively pouring into different tumblers.

Yeah, I'd say leave no ash unturned; just for sanity's sake, it would be good to verify that you're not
throwing values away.

Cheers,

Mike


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## 924T (Oct 6, 2012)

DONNZ,

That is way cool! What is the vertical square pipe, steel?

Is your flame from charcoal or wood that's placed on the grate at the bottom?

Very inspiring.

And, thankyou for going to the trouble of shooting and posting the pictures!

Cheers,

Mike


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## 924T (Oct 6, 2012)

grance,

Do you make the wood pellets yourself?

I've heard they produce very little ash.

Have you ever tried biomass pellets?

The pellets do sound like a good idea, and should be very easy to store.

Thanks for the fuel suggestion!

Cheers,

Mike


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## DONNZ (Oct 6, 2012)

924T said:


> DONNZ,
> 
> That is way cool! What is the vertical square pipe, steel?
> 
> ...



Something I found in the junk yard. 31.5" tall X 8.5" square X 1/2 thick steel. When I find something I go for quality, precut and has more than one use. Round steel easier to find but go thick wall. 

I could make this a horizontal blast furnace and never cut or weld it. Sliding end plates would work just fine. 

A bit damp out today but will fire it up soon and have pics of fuel and fire. 

Maybe I'll do some green board charcoal just for the fun of it.


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## goldsilverpro (Oct 6, 2012)

I recently bought a 40# bag of Greenway oak pellets for $4.49 at a Home Depot type store. The 40# filled 2, 5 gal buckets. They're used for pellet heating stoves. I bought them to use in a pellet burning gadget for smoking meats. The brand I bought came from sawdust generated only from milling oak flooring. No bark, glue, or softwoods which can all be contained in some of the other brands. It burns to almost zero white ash. The pellets you buy especially for smoking meats cost from about $1 to $3 per pound and all the brands I've seen contain about 75% oak with apple, cherry, hickory, or whatever, mixed in. 
http://www.greenwaypellets.com/
http://www.amazenproducts.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=AMNPS5X8


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## 924T (Oct 7, 2012)

goldsilverpro,

Thanks, that is excellent information to have, considering I have never purchased wood pellets
in my life-----------it definitely sounds like the all hardwood pellets are the low-ash way to go.

I was just debating charcoal -vs- wood pellets last night, and I was starting to wrap my brain
around the whole pellets concept, because the stores here basically close out charcoal after
Labor Day, and don't bring it back until Memorial Day, so other than trying to source damaged oak pallets
to cut up for fuel, I wasn't sure how to ensure an ongoing supply. 

As an aside. does that meat smoking pellet gadget you mentioned work to your satisfaction?

Thanks for the wood pellet info,

Cheers,

Mike


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## Geo (Oct 7, 2012)

charcoal burns through a metal 5 gallon bucket in one burn. thats a little too hot without using some type of refractory for insulation. dead tree limbs is around the right temperature but doesnt burn long enough. chips or pellets may be a happy medium.


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## goldsilverpro (Oct 7, 2012)

924T,

I answered your question about the smoker gadget in another thread.
http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=15785&p=159049#p159049


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## 924T (Oct 9, 2012)

Geo,

I had no idea that charcoal packed that much punch, to be able to burn through a bucket in 1 burn.

It appears to me that the hardwood pellets are the ultimate solution for my needs.

I'm figuring with some trial and error, it shouldn't take too awfully long to be able to determine
how many pellets it will take to yield a specific burn time that matches what's required to 
properly ash the I.C. chips.

This is assuming that you don't mix the chip types, to minimize the variables.

Cheers,

Mike


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## DONNZ (Oct 11, 2012)

My square pipe burn. Quick view pics and done just for the fun of doing it.


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## DONNZ (Oct 11, 2012)

Square pipe post #2:


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## DONNZ (Oct 11, 2012)

Tin can experiment. Method used is more or less in line with making charcoal. Starved of oxygen.

An experiment that may or may not useful.


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## DONNZ (Oct 12, 2012)

Did a little separating this morning. What looked like copper wire is gold wire. Medal did not melt. This might be useful. That piece of fiber is still flexible but appears swollen. I wonder if it absorbed the resin from the green board. Be my luck if I just didn't made a new material. Those flat pieces to the right act more like metal than plastic. Can bend them then pressed flat with my finger. Don't think plastic would do that. I'll continue to explore, sifting through the wreckage.


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## g_axelsson (Oct 12, 2012)

Sorry to break your illusions, you do not have gold wire. It is gold plate on copper at the best.
The fibric bendy pieces is fibre glass that fibre glass circuit boards are made of. It gives the strength to the boards and resin is used to give the stiffness. Just as in plastic boats.

/Göran


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## 924T (Oct 13, 2012)

DONNZ,

Wow! 

That's really getting after it, and coming up with some interesting results, to boot.

Well done!

Now I'm inspired to do some tinkering/experimenting---------I've got to locate the battery charger
for my digital camera, so I can shoot some pictures.

As you might have guessed, I place extremely high value on innovation, which is why the GRF just
continues to amaze me.

Thanks for going to the effort to shoot and post your pictures.

Cheers,

Mike


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## DONNZ (Oct 13, 2012)

g_axelsson said:


> Sorry to break your illusions, you do not have gold wire. It is gold plate on copper at the best.
> The fibric bendy pieces is fibre glass that fibre glass circuit boards are made of. It gives the strength to the boards and resin is used to give the stiffness. Just as in plastic boats.
> 
> /Göran



Gold plate on copper, true. Fiber glass, true. Still not sure about the hair fine wire. 
Found the resin. It seems to have carbonized into a powder. 
If nothing else it was a experiment worth trying and the best part is, I didn't end up with a blob of mixed metals. 
I'll see what material I have on hand for the next burn. Still have two trash bags of bank statements to burn.

Small steps.


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## DONNZ (Oct 13, 2012)

924T said:


> DONNZ,
> 
> Wow!
> 
> ...



Story better with pictures. I'll never be remembered for my writing. 
I use rechargeable battery's in my tiny digital camera, not worth the time or effort. Did a search for a power cord and don't know why I didn't order it. Something like $2.00. Must have been the shipping charge.


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## GotTheBug (Oct 24, 2012)

Have to ask, what about the smoke? I started to cook a few today over a propane flame and the smoke was crazy. Had to shut it down since the neighbors are home.


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## rpg (Nov 19, 2012)

my last company is doing pyrolysis to create diesel and other fuels out of plastic. The process is done on a kiln, oxygen free. When the plastic is fed nitrogen is used to purge any oxygen from the feed. Plastic melts at around 300C and vaporizes at around 400C. The left over coke is around 3%. They don't do PCBs because of the increase residuals of fiber glass.


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## TomVader (Dec 15, 2012)

I have a question. Is chlorine gas one of the products of burning the type of plastic that the PCBs are made of, and if so, can this chlorine bond with the gold plating and then carry the gold off in the smoke? Thanks in advance.


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## Geo (Dec 15, 2012)

im not a chemist and may be 100% wrong about this, but i think the hcl has to be formed in water. chlorine alone should not effect gold.


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## Pantherlikher (Dec 15, 2012)

Just a quick thought on smoke as a problem. Have you ever barbaqued in winter?. I do it when I feel like the good taste of a burned burger or something.

Having a furnace disguised as an old charcol BBQ would fool the nosy neighbors. I'm just not sure of the smell. maybe BBQ some before hand to get the juices down inside might help.
That's been my thinking here since my wonderful neighbor has taken a major dislike for me and likes calling the code enforcement every now and again just for having stuff in my driveway. Like the seats from my van to make room for more scrap inside.

Any how, wood chips or Pellets would be perfect as you cut a hole for the blower attachment. Metal can assembly in the middle of it all. Fire wood up. I use a propane torch. I'd think a round BBQ lit on the edge of pellets would create a nice slow circular burn toward the center. You could even take some meat fat and let it sizzle on the lid of the BBQ for the meat smell.
Just disguised MGiver thought.
BS.


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## butcher (Dec 15, 2012)

Burning poly vinyl chloride plastic can release HCl gas,
HCl hydrogen chloride is a gas, when this gas hits moisture in air or your lungs, or bubbled into water will form HCl acid hydrochloric acid.


http://www.ehow.com/list_5926080_dangers-burning-plastic-bottles_.html

if incinerating gold with HCl or any chloride salt, chlorides in melt, can form chlorine gas and HCl gases, gold is volatile in chlorine gas at 800 degrees and will vapor off in fumes, so basically yes if burning poly vinyl chloride with gold or any chloride salt with gold will result in gold chloride gases in these fumes

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&tbo=d&rlz=1R2RNQN_enUS457&q=gold+volatility+in+chlorine+gas+at+high+temperatures&oq=gold+volatility+in+chlorine+gas+at+high+temperatures&gs_l=serp.12...531.26078.1.27953.30.18.0.0.0.1.2672.18858.0j1j5-1j2j3j2j4.13.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.InQ8myUcgzo&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=e474f98c32051253&bpcl=39967673&biw=1024&bih=539


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## g_axelsson (Dec 15, 2012)

TomVader said:


> I have a question. Is chlorine gas one of the products of burning the type of plastic that the PCBs are made of, and if so, can this chlorine bond with the gold plating and then carry the gold off in the smoke? Thanks in advance.


In the book "Metallurgy of Gold" by M. Eissler is treating the subject of "Loss of Gold by Volatilization in Chloridizing Roasting." (pg. 216-227)
More or less it can be summarized in that the loss of gold can take place to a considerable extent during chloridizing roasting. The higher the temperature is the easier it is to lose gold.

A lot of the chlorine in the plastic (my guess is that the main source of chlorine is PVC) is turned into HCl (not chlorine gas, Cl2) when it burns and then carried away in the gases. This can be done at lower temperatures than the red heat used in roasting ore. But there are also other sources of chlorine in PCB:s, for example the electrolyte in capacitors. Some of that chlorine could easily stay in the material and become active at higher temperatures during incineration.

One way to catch that gold is to use particle filters on the gases from the incineration.

I don't know how big the losses are in reality, it probably depends on the way the burning is done and could be really individual. 

Thanks for asking the question, I had a really interesting read while researching it.

For the book, see http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=14107

/Göran


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## g_axelsson (Dec 15, 2012)

I just remembered the Miller process where chlorine gas is blown through molten gold. Most other metals will form chlorides before the gold starts to form chloride. So as long as there are other metals present the gold on the PCB:s should be mostly protected.

Free gold particles in contact with chlorinated substances could be another story...

/Göran


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## butcher (Dec 15, 2012)

I am not totally sure, but from what I can gather, 

If we have a gold chloride AuCl3 at a little over 200 deg. the AuCl3 begins to decompose the chlorine can begin to leave the gold salt crystal as a gas, but at higher temperature over 300 deg. the gold can again form a chloride of gold, gold at high temperature (I have read 800deg.) or (close to red hot) gold can be dissolved in a stream of chlorine gas, and become volatile in this atmosphere of gas at high heat.

I think also the PVC plastics would break down with heat melting and then gassing off the vapors one of which is HCl, at a much lower temperature than where gold would become volatile, if all of the PVC was decomposed to ash, at these lower temperature, the gold probably would not become volatile (assuming all of the plastic decomposed to ash in the container, at these lower temperatures).

An acid and a metal form salts of that metal, Chloride salts or salts of chlorine gas and a metal, or salts of HCl and a metal, (NaCl, CuCl, PbCl2, AuCl3 and do so on) Chloride salts in powders of gold, in heating or fusion before a roast, can fuse with the gold powders before the metal chlorides decompose, and the chlorides fume off.

On heating the dry gold powders can then become wet again (fuse seeming to melt back to a liquid syrup) and form a syrup like substance (fused salts) in these salts during the fusion with the heat, this entraps the gases from leaving, and much of the chlorides at these temperatures can react with these metal powders, the chemical reaction under these conditions can dissolve metals that normally will not dissolve (like Rhodium being dissolved in a fusion of bisulfate where otherwise Rh is not attacked and is very resistant to acids).

Then on further heating of a period of time this fusion begins to dry out again and harden as the more volatile gases leave, if this lump of fused metals are not again crushed and exposed to heat and air then much of these gases are trapped in the crystal matrix of the lump, but if crushed and exposed to air these gases can more easily escape and vapor off or leave the crystal matrix, oxygen can also help to oxidize the more reactive metals, anions, Cations involved, most of the chlorides (or acids are driven out of the powders or crystals) as long as the crystals are powdered enough and the temperature is not raised to a higher temperature where gold can become volatile, the crystals can decompose, with minimum lose of gold.

but if the temperature was raised to a red heat before the chloride was decomposed, (like burning biscuits in a hot fire the outside of the crystal can burn, before the inside of the biscuit or crystal dried out), at red heat with chloride salts entrapped in the crystal matrix the loses would be much higher and you can have gold vapor off in the fumes.

Not having chlorides, or HCl, or chloride salts, and eliminating them as much as possible before burning, incineration or roasting, can just help to eliminate the possibility of vapor off some of your gold.

It is not only gold that forms volatile chlorides, silver and many base metals will also.


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## Geo (Dec 15, 2012)

consider this. how much plastic are you going to have with gold in it. if the OP is concerned about a few slot connectors needing incinerated to get the pins out, i dont see a problem with it. i havent noticed that any of the pins i incinerate was missing gold when the acid hit it.


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## NoIdea (Dec 15, 2012)

Hi All - top of the morning to you all.  

From what i recall, PVC was and may still be 25-30% by weight HCl, dependng on its use, so if you burn/pyrolyze PVC you will create or the potential to create 1lt of 25-30% HCl acid if absorbed in water.

I think i made have mention somewhere here, that it was cheeper for a company to ship waste PVC from one contry to another and convert it to HCl acid via a conversion plant than it was to transport the equivelent amount of HCl acid due to the cost in specialize equipment and transportation permits. Food for thought. 

And DO NOT burn PVC around fruiting trees unless you want all of your produce to end up on the ground. :shock: 

Deano


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## AndyWilliams (Dec 15, 2012)

NoIdea said:


> And DO NOT burn PVC around fruiting trees unless you want all of your produce to end up on the ground. :shock:
> 
> Deano


Good to know if we ever enter into urban warfare!


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## bmgold2 (Jan 30, 2014)

NoIdea said:


> Hi All - top of the morning to you all.
> 
> From what i recall, PVC was and may still be 25-30% by weight HCl, dependng on its use, so if you burn/pyrolyze PVC you will create or the potential to create 1lt of 25-30% HCl acid if absorbed in water.
> 
> ...



After reading this, I did a quick Google search and came up with:

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=11274

and - couldn't figure out how to directly link to this:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Don't+ban+PVC:+Incinerate+and+recycle+it+instead!

You will have to research and decide for yourself if you can safely make your own HCl from recycled PCV plastic but it might --- Well, Don't try this at home --- A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. It is something to think about though.


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## NoIdea (Jan 31, 2014)

Good Morning, PVC pyrolysis is done in an oxygen free environment, hence the word "Pyrolysis", so no dioxins are produced. The only real difficulty i have encountered is the swelling of the PVC when heated, so make sure you leave a good head space in your reactor to allow for this. Remember 1kg PVC + Pyrolysis = HCl gas add 1lt H20 = 1lt 25-30% HCl acid

Cheers

Deano


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## bmgold2 (Jan 31, 2014)

NoIdea said:


> Good Morning, PVC pyrolysis is done in an oxygen free environment, hence the word "Pyrolysis", so no dioxins are produced. The only real difficulty i have encountered is the swelling of the PVC when heated, so make sure you leave a good head space in your reactor to allow for this. Remember 1kg PVC + Pyrolysis = HCl gas add 1lt H20 = 1lt 25-30% HCl acid
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Deano



Now I'm really interested in this. It sounds like you actually did this before and not just repeating what you read or heard. Was this done in the unit you built from this post?

http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=16473&p=166282

I spent some time converting the metric weights and volumes to pounds and ounces only to realise that it is 1 to 1 by weight. I'm not much good with metric but figured out 1000 grams = 1000 liters of H2O or 1mL water weighs 1 gram.

That should mean 1 part PVC to 1 part water by weight to make HCL

Could this be done in steel (iron) pipe and fittings for a small test? Will the HCL gas destroy the pipe fast?

Maybe I'll never try it but I do have a contraption I built years ago out of pipe and pipe fittings to make wood gas (again small test) and PVC waste shouldn't be hard to come up with. Basically free HCL sounds pretty good to me.


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## bmgold2 (Feb 3, 2014)

bmgold2 said:


> I do have a contraption I built years ago out of pipe and pipe fittings to make wood gas (again small test) and PVC waste shouldn't be hard to come up with. Basically free HCL sounds pretty good to me.



Some interest was expressed in a PM about how I made this contraption so I went out and took a couple pictures for anyone interested in what I did.







This isn't exactly how it was set up when I tried it. I converted it into a pestle to smash up rocks/I.C. chips or whatever I decided to break up. I used a fence post driver as the mortar.

Back to the wood gas generator idea. The pipe is, I think a 5 inch long piece of 2 inch diameter black iron pipe with threads on each end. On the bottom I brazed a pipe cap on to insure it was sealed. On the top I put a 2 inch to 3/4 inch adapter which was sealed with teflon tape. When I used it to try to make wood gas, there was a 90 degree elbow with a short piece of pipe at the adapter so it wasn't so high. The 3/4 inch pipe is about 24 inches long on the one I built.

How I used it was I put my wood (saw dust) in the 2 inch pipe maybe half filling it and screwed the adapter on. Then I shoved that end into a fire and that heated it up and a flammable gas came out the other end of the pipe. This was a small test so I put a balloon on that end to catch the gas which I intended to try running a propane burner with as a test.

The idea kind of worked but the problem was the device also produced a foul smelling tar like substance along with the wood gas. I should have built a filter to condense the tar and clean up the gas but never got around to finishing that part of it. I proved to myself that it did produce a flammable gas from the wood and also turned the sawdust into charcoal.

This device was what I was thinking about trying to make hydrochloric acid using scrap PVC in but so far I never even got any further than thinking about that idea. My though is that it probably will also produce some tar as well as flammable gas but I'm not sure that would happen. I'm guessing you would need some kind of trap to separate any tar or liquid and then bubble the gasses through water to capture the HCl gas. From there, I'm not sure if there would still be any flammable gas left so you might want to catch that or direct it back into the fire to burn it producing more heat to continue the process.

This is just my thoughts on how it might work and I very likely could be wrong. If anyone (especially NoIdea) cares to correct or confirm my thoughts please do. Since I still have store bought HCl and it is one of the cheaper and easier acids to get it probably isn't worth doing more than thinking about this idea but once it was set up and working it might help solve a couple problems. How to get hydrochloric acid and how to get rid of waste plastics. I was thinking (hoping) that maybe the plastic parts from the connectors I have been ripping apart might be able to be used for this but I don't even know what type of plastic they are made of. For a test I'm sure I could find some junk PVC or CPVC pipe laying around if needed.


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