# Opinions on remaining material after incineration



## Slaughlin79 (Jan 8, 2018)

I tried my first incineration yesterday and What remains I haven’t the slightest clue what it could all be. The material is from wholes circuit boards (compacitors and iron removed) that have been in a 5 gallon bucket soaking in an AP solution for probably 3 years. Old boards were removed and new put in. It wasn’t just the same boards so I had a little bit of material in the bottom of bucket.I added fresh acid and hydrogen peroxide 3%, periodically buy still a small amount of remaining copper with a bunch of what I would call gunk in the bottom. After filtering and rinsing with water I dried the material in a pot and took a small sample that brought out back and set on top of my crawfish cooker and cranked it up. I set it up to make sure it got plenty of oxygen to hopefully oxide and burn off the stuff you don’t want. I guess it’s its safe to say I burnt off some of the stuff you don’t want to burn off but little if any was blow out buy the terbulance. I could be wrong though. I took a glass rod and crushed everything up and reheated and repeated.Now I’m guessing at what I am looking at the leftovers. I would very much appreciate it if you experienced guys could take a look at the picture and if you feel comfortable give me an educated guess of what it could be? This AP process was started before I had any knowledge of the effects of tin in a solution with gold. I jumped in head first without knowing the basics and that’s my fault and bc of this site I’ve learned a lot,but,I’m stumped on this one. I don’t mind reading so if you can only point me in a direction I’ll most certainly appreciate that too. Thanks


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## FrugalRefiner (Jan 8, 2018)

Just to be clear, is this the "gunk" from the bottom of the bucket. At first I thought you had incinerated the boards after they came out of the AP, but after I read it again, I'm thinking this was the sediment at the bottom. Paragraphs might help. The more time you spend making your posts clear when asking questions, the better answers you'll get.

Please avoid abbreviations and text lingo like "bc" instead of because. Many members have to use translation software when reading the forum, and things like that do not translate well. I've been a little lax in enforcing this lately, and I've seen a lot of people falling into the habit, so I may become more strict again.

Wear gloves. Even dried materials can be very toxic, and in some cases even more dangerous than when they are in solution.

Dave


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## Slaughlin79 (Jan 8, 2018)

Sorry about that. I thought I made it clear that it was only the gunk on the bottom and not the whole board. Next I’ll write in paragraphs and I’ll use beacause instead of bc. Constructive criticism makes you better so thank you. 

Anyways,yes,what you see in the picture is the gold foils and very fine gold dust along with everything that the AP removed from the boards and fell to the bottom of the bucket.

There for sure was a very small amount of copper along with traces of tin and possibly other metals. I did my best to keep iron out so shouldn’t be any.

The whole purpose was to remove tin because of problems I’ve had in the past. This is my first attempt at removing contaminants with heat and I’m not sure if the process im doing is sufficient enough to remove these? 

basically heating a pot over a crawfish cooker and getting the pot red how along with all the material for at least an hour, what would be left in the pot? 

I don’t know anything except what I’ve read about incineration, but most is government websites about chemicals and getting rid of drugs and that does not pertain to me.I don’t like asking question to be honest but when I can’t find the answer I ask and I hope someone would do the same with me. Thanks


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## FrugalRefiner (Jan 8, 2018)

Slaughlin79 said:


> The whole purpose was to remove tin because of problems I’ve had in the past. This is my first attempt at removing contaminants with heat and I’m not sure if the process im doing is sufficient enough to remove these?
> 
> basically heating a pot over a crawfish cooker and getting the pot red how along with all the material for at least an hour, what would be left in the pot?


Other than a few metals that will volatilize (like zinc, cadmium, and mercury), you don't remove contaminants like tin by incinerating. The tin is still there, but it creates an oxide that is easier to eliminate with further wet chemistry steps.

What would be left in the pot would be oxides of most of the metals that dissolved, then cemented out in the AP. That would include tin, copper, and a host of other metals depending on what all you left on the boards when you put them in the AP. You mentioned removing capacitors and steel, but anything else on the boards contributed to the sediment at the bottom of the bucket.

Dave


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## Slaughlin79 (Jan 11, 2018)

Thanks Dave. I could’ve sworn I read on here that repeated heating and cooling would burn off the remaining metals and that’s why I tried it but now I know.

It makes sense now that you say, because I soaked leftovers in ar and it tested good but after it sat for a few days ,because I had a few fishing rods to build, I barely got a hint of purple when I tested and it took a while for it to even change color. I’m glad it sat for a few days or I would’ve ended up losing when I filtered.

Ima stop and do some reading because i don’t know where to go from here but I do have a one final question for guys. Does Hoke go into detail about really dirty solutions and how to undo what you’ve done or do y’all know of another book or anything I can read that talks about about starting over after a screw up? 

Thanks again Dave


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## nickvc (Jan 12, 2018)

With a really dirty solution the best advice I can give is to cement any values using copper and then re dissolve any values.


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