# Incineration of ICs



## Anonymous (Sep 7, 2009)

I incinerated several 20 liter pails of IC's then ball milled the lot, recently inquired with a vendor from this forum about selling the lot when he replied the gold would have possibly rubbed off the pins while in the ball mill decided to remove the pins along with any magnetic goodies to save on postage,

The method I used for incineration not really high tech, I have a foundry furnace with an 800,000 btu propane fired burner, using the largest clay crucible I have - filled it with IC's and let her rip. Because of the intense heat and flame running full bore hardly any appreciable smoke comes from the furnace. 

My propane burner is from a roofers tar kettle, liquid propane is feed directly to a coil surrounding the burner where it become vapor, using 100 lb bottle of fuel will ice up at full throttle so to achieve full performance at all times I have it hooked up to a 1000 gallon tank behind my shop.

Here's what I found, have a close look at the pins in the screen you will see small round objects with a very nice gold hue, in the 2nd picture some larger objects 1.9 grams with nice rich gold color.

Each screen being sifted had these small gold nuggets laying in the bottom of the screen. To control dust I shake my screen under water,

Gill Elmgren


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## Anonymous (Sep 9, 2009)

I don't think to many follow my rants with any great interest, as some of you know a built a ball mill, I work very slow but here are some interesting results of my work, which I'll share with you.

A lot of folks are having trouble getting the precious metals out of their IC's, so was I in fact I offered this pail of incinerated and milled ash to Peter_H who offered me $290.00 usd then said "Unfortunely it looks like I will have to regret on this material.".

I'm tickled pink that he refused to purchase the ash, I finally decided to try my hand at smelting, The bucket of ash looked like black soot, I mixed in some Borax, Soda Ash with a bit of Potassium Nitrate then fired the lot well several lots.

My first lesson learned from this is the gold comes down first, then it take a lot of heat to get some action with the rest of the material, the metals coming off at this point lean more towards white or silvery in color.

Like lasersteve said " I like to keep an eye on the metal once I have it" well here;s 4.35 pounds smelted from my IC ash. It still needs to be further refined but fro the first time in 2 years I have actual metal in my hands.

Still some beads in the slag, this I will re run in the ball mill then pan out the heavies.
View attachment 2
View attachment 1


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## EDI Refining (Sep 9, 2009)

Gill,
I like your new pictures posted.
looks alot more promising then your first two.

Sorry I had to regret on the 30 lbs of ash.

all the best,
Peter


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## Anonymous (Sep 9, 2009)

P3M said:


> Gill,
> I like your new pictures posted.
> looks alot more promising then your first two.
> 
> ...



I'm not this material is from that ash after smelting. If you had purchased my ash I would not have had the opportunity to try my hand at this. I had already posted on the forum my intentions to give up on refining precious metals.

Had the crucible and foundry furnace already in inventory, I hesitated to smelt knowing the flux would raise havoc with the furnace lining and crucible. Now I look at this from a different angle, it's just another cost of doing business.

Thanks for your kind words Peter.

ttys
Gill


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## Anonymous (Sep 18, 2009)

All the smelted metals have been digested, we're down to the mud. Most of it is black, impatient as I am I filtered some unsettled solution and got this beautiful purple mud. 

It took most of the day to collect what is in that filter paper, using a vacuum pump.


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## butcher (Sep 19, 2009)

its amazing the color we get from metals isn't it? like yer pictures, glad you didn't throw in the towel.


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## Platdigger (Sep 19, 2009)

Hi gustavus, say, what did you digest everything into?


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## Anonymous (Sep 20, 2009)

Platdigger said:


> Hi gustavus, say, what did you digest everything into?



I corn flaked the smelted metals then digested everything in nitric. Everything was put on hold today as I went on a landfill run.

Turned out to be a very productive trip, truck load of computers, an International Harvester stationery engine maybe 1 1/2 HP with a cracked cylinder head and a broken rocker arm. A pair of mint chevron taillight lens's and bezels, crab tree distributor, Stromberg carburetor and a V8 hubcap for a 1940 Ford. 

ttys
G


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## Platdigger (Sep 20, 2009)

Hey, that was a good trip wasn't it..... 8) 

Is the International motor an old "hit and miss", or a bit newer?

Also, it appears you salvaged a fair bit of gold from the ashes.....


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## Anonymous (Sep 20, 2009)

Platdigger said:


> Hey, that was a good trip wasn't it..... 8)
> 
> Is the International motor an old "hit and miss", or a bit newer?
> 
> Also, it appears you salvaged a fair bit of gold from the ashes.....



Found a box full of these funky ties, the engine is not a hit n miss.


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## patnor1011 (Sep 20, 2009)

heh I would love to walk around your landfill...


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## Anonymous (Sep 23, 2009)

From 13 lbs smelted metal, I cemented 9.64 tr oz of silver/palladium, washed and dried before weighing.

The mud in AR, it's no wonder Harold_V was turning out .9999 gold, he advised me to wash the mud in a heated HCL and water which brought out some copper and other junk. The changes were immediate and like magic there was a much noted change color to the mud, with some copper scum float.

Next time I process this type of material I'm going to give it a much better wash, I'm quickly finding, there is no free lunch in refining, follow each step precisely to the letter. No short cuts, no experimenting, learn the basics and stick with them.. 

Many thanks goes to Harold for his time in tutoring and the patience he has had with me. 

Does anyone have some real stannous to sell or trade. The stannous purchased from eBay turned out to be garbage.

Thanks
Gill


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## lazersteve (Sep 23, 2009)

Gill,

I can hook you up with some real stannous.

PM me for details.

Great work on this project, you've got me thinking about building a gas fired furnace again!

Steve


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## Anonymous (Sep 24, 2009)

lazersteve said:


> Gill,
> 
> I can hook you up with some real stannous.
> 
> ...



PM Sent, Thanks Steve.


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## silversaddle1 (Sep 24, 2009)

We are talking about the black IC's here, right? Not processors. I have a huge tub of mid 70's Texas Insturments IC's that if you crack them open most look to have gold in them. Was wondering how a guy would refine them! :roll:


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## Anonymous (Sep 24, 2009)

silversaddle1 said:


> We are talking about the black IC's here, right? Not processors. I have a huge tub of mid 70's Texas Instruments IC's that if you crack them open most look to have gold in them. Was wondering how a guy would refine them! :roll:



Yes this batch was the low grade black ic's processed by the method described, how ever I would now have no fear of including cpu's, flat packs and fingers into the equation.

Don't worry about all that black ash the values are there and show up after smelting as shown in my earlier pictures below.

I may even have some tantalum present, it would be nice to know at what point a guy would reclaim it from the refining process via smelting, does it drop out during the silver/palladium precipitation or later.

My next plan is to make a container to burn sulfur which will generate and collect the sulfur dioxide gas which I will pump into my gold chloride solution to drop the gold. If you try this remember SO2 is poisonous and very corrosive on some metals.

To eliminate the nitric I plan to evaporate. Right now I'm using aluminum to drop the base metals from my soon to be discarded liquids.

When I pulled the magnetic junk from the ash after coming from the ball mill, the water kept the dust where it belonged plus it allowed me to swirl everything into suspension where my magnet could easily pick out the magnetic junk. Use a plastic bag for the magnet.

ttys
Gill


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## Anonymous (Sep 24, 2009)

you can generate SO2 with sodium metabisulfite and HCL, no need to collect hot gases by burning

jim


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## LeftyTheBandit (Sep 30, 2009)

james122964 said:


> you can generate SO2 with sodium metabisulfite and HCL, no need to collect hot gases by burning
> 
> jim



There we go. I learned yet another interesting and useful fact. Now I will have to bubble the SO2 generated from SMB and HCL into my Auric Chloride. I was trying to find an easy source of SO2.


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## LeftyTheBandit (Sep 30, 2009)

Now I find out Sulphuric Acid and SMB are best as per wikipedia...

It can also be prepared with sodium metabisulfite:

H2SO4 (aq) + Na2S2O5 (aq) → 2 SO2 (g) + Na2SO4 (s) + H2O (l) 

Now as a non chemist would the waste solution be dangerous? Doesn'  t hurt to ask.

I use a three beaker fume scrubber already to tread my fumes so I have everything I need.

Maybe I should take a night course on chemistry...


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## Anonymous (Oct 1, 2009)

Sulfur Dioxide in Canada maybe ordered from Linde 1 866 385 5349. The 600 gram bottle comes with a regulator costs $390.00 plus $10.80 per month rental, the larger 7 Kg bottle you supply the regulator, contents cost $247.00 bottle rental $116.00 yearly.

best regards
Gill


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## Harold_V (Oct 1, 2009)

A regulator is not required. A valve is. You can use the one that comes on the bottle with perfectly acceptable results. 

Harold


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## Anonymous (Oct 1, 2009)

Harold_V said:


> A regulator is not required. A valve is. You can use the one that comes on the bottle with perfectly acceptable results.
> 
> Harold



Thanks Harold, the 600 gram thermos sized bottle only comes with regulator ( no other option) avialble, the larger 7 KG bottle comes with out. Both are rentals by the month or yearly contract. 

Linde will not sell the bottle outright.

Regards
Gill


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## Harold_V (Oct 2, 2009)

I realize that there are many things different now than when I was refining, but it was commonplace to procure bottles of SO2 that were large----think of the 240 cf bottles of oxygen. As memory serves, I used to pay right at $200 for a bottle of that size, which was more weight than I could handle. They were available from two different sources, although it was more and more difficult to obtain as time moved on. One of then dropped the product. I dealt with chemical supply houses. 

The price you quoted makes the idea more or less useless. You can achieve similar results by other methods and not be tied to a lease that is totally unreasonable, to say nothing of the price of the contents, which is not in line with reality. Unless you have a good reason to not do so, you'd probably be better served in this case to switch to ferrous sulfate, or stick with SMB.

Frankly, it would likely pay to investigate the purchase of your own bottle and having it filled. That may or may not be a viable solution, but, assuming they would fill your bottle, the overall price would be much cheaper, and you'd not be tied to the calendar. 

Harold


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## LeftyTheBandit (Oct 2, 2009)

Would you think the idea of placing a small amount of smb with a small amount of Sulpheric acid in a sealed beaker with a hose leading out into my beaker of auric Chloride would bubble enough SO2 to drop gold?



The only reason I'm not just using SMB is that Hoke is a big fan of SO2, If its better than SMB, I want it.

And, since the SMB is from a wine store, I'm just not that sure it's chemically pure SMB.


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## Harold_V (Oct 2, 2009)

Considering the SMB in question is suited for use in foods, I expect it is of high purity, so I'm not convinced that's a valid concern. 

As far as generating SO2 by the method you proposed, it likely will work, but unless you have a means to work with SO2 gas (fume hood), it can prove to be a very negative experience. The barren solution will be somewhat saturated, off-gassing as it's handled when processing the precipitated gold. You would also have to solve the riddle of stopping the process when you have finished precipitation. You can remove the device from heat, but that won't stop production of SO2 instantly. If you can overcome these problems, it may well work quite nicely. The best of all worlds will be if you can come up with a method to store any unused gas. 

Good idea, (I think!)
An added thought. When you use SMB, you _are_ using SO2. The difference is how it is provided. 

Harold


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## Anonymous (Oct 3, 2009)

My recovered gold from the incinerated ash, inside the bottle 35.5 grams of gold. 

I agree with Harold the cost of SO2 along with the rental is prohibitive, SMB works just fine and would be my preferred precipitant. My objective is to refine gold not reinvent the wheel.

From the 13 lbs of smelted low grade IC's I got a very good return on silver, you can see that there is some gold mixed in with the cemented silver, so the lady hasn't finished singing. 

To recover that 35.5 grams of gold, I evaporated the nitric adding a bit of HCL, when I thought the job was done added a touch of urea to make sure and sure enough the nitric fizzled showing me that I have not yet learned my lessons well enough.

It only took 1/2 ounce of urea in water to finish neutralizing the evaporated nitric, then I precipitated using SMB which dropped a chocolate brown gold, some silver came down with the gold. Not enough that one could visually see. the silver came out in the wash.

Once the gold was washed the powder has an affinity for itself and clumps together rather nicely.


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## 4metals (Oct 3, 2009)

Lefty

The problem with generating your own SO2 in glassware is what happens when you run out of gas and you're not done? How do you add more SMB or acid to continue? It gets messy. I would drop it with the SMB and if you have to clean up the gold, use some creative fluxing techniques. 

As Gus just said, the objective is to refine gold not reinvent the wheel. Don't get too hung up on any exact method until you have some practical experience. Keep it simple!!!!!!


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## goldsilverpro (Oct 3, 2009)

I've used SO2 quite a bit and don't really care much for it. For some reason, when dropping gold from dirty solutions, I don't think it's as selective as sodium sulfite, photo grade (my preference - SMB works about the same). And, it really stinks. I do like the nice spongy gold that SO2 makes from a clean solution.

Like 4metals said, *Keep it Simple!*

*Some other axioms.*

-Make it so a chimp can do it. 
-Minimize the number of steps in a process. 
-Eliminate the bottlenecks - every process has them. 
-Keep it cheap but don't be penny-wise dollar-foolish. 
-Start slow and small. 
-Know what your material is worth before making any decisions on what to do or how to do it.
-Learn how to sort
-Learn that gold is just a metal.
-Refining is a series of steps, each of which makes the pile smaller


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## Anonymous (Oct 3, 2009)

gustavus said:


> From the 13 lbs of smelted low grade IC's I got a very good return on silver, you can see that there is some gold mixed in with the cemented silver, so the lady hasn't finished singing.
> 
> To recover that 35.5 grams of gold.




You got 35.5 grams of gold from 13 lbs of IC chips? plus silver.

Thats great, I have been gathering regular old ic chips and have made a punch to cut the centers out, now trying to build a way to automate it.
Jim


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## scrapman1077 (Oct 4, 2009)

james122964, gustavus stated 13 lbs of metal then later stated 13 lbs ICs. I think he meant metal. 
gustavus, can you tell the weight of ICs you started with?


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## shyknee (Oct 4, 2009)

gustuvas
great posting and nice pictures
question i have is how many pails of IC did it take to get 13 pounds of metal


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## Anonymous (Oct 5, 2009)

shyknee said:


> gustuvas
> great posting and nice pictures
> question i have is how many pails of IC did it take to get 13 pounds of metal



I'm not sure, as you all know I was throwing in the towel. I had also added the remains of some digested metals from last year. The weight of the gold powder will be adjusted on my return home, The one thing I learned is that gold powder and water like each other very much and it takes a long time to dry out using a hair dryer. 

Right now I helping a friend remove a bunch of stuff from a building he purchased which was of all things a Dentists office, lots of shiny goods used in dentistry. Most marked Ni Cr with a small percentage of Nb. Some marked weldable while others are tin/silver which melt with a Bic lighter.

I think the most interesting and possibly most valuable item is a pair of hinged teeth similar to false teeth, these have various crowns and other repairs, I believe these to be from when the Dentist was learning his trade and these would have been his credentials as most apprentices are required to make a model or working object to test their skills.

Inside the building, three rooms for dental work complete with chairs, overhead lights, x-ray equipment, a small self contained unit for developing the film, a neat 1 hp compressor and a self contained vacuum pump with a water side with filters used to suck out and rinse the scagg from a patients mouth during surgery. There is a lot of the old filters from this vacuum unit laying about in the basement, but I'm not expecting anything in the way of precious metals and not even sure I want to handle these,

Two of the 3 chairs have sold already, there is a small autoclave, curing lights, developer, 3 x-ray units still available anyone interested just PM I can put you in touch with Bill.

Bill has given me the compressor and vacuum pump plus an overhead light to hang over my metal lathe at home. This is my payment for helping out.

Best Regards
Gill


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## Harold_V (Oct 6, 2009)

gustavus said:


> There is a lot of the old filters from this vacuum unit laying about in the basement, but I'm not expecting anything in the way of precious metals and not even sure I want to handle these,


They will most likely contain traces of values, but they are nothing short of disgusting to deal with. I've processed the contents a few times, more or less a favor to the dentist in question. 

In your case, assuming the dentist worked with silver amalgam, that will be a part of the contents, along with bits of teeth, and more than enough garbage that is rotting. The stench from these containers is horrible. I used to open them in my fume hood, and do an immediate wash with ammonium hydroxide. Do be aware that the potential for hepatitus B & C is ever present, as is AIDS. Be certain to wear protective gear should you decide to deal with them. 

Unless you can see obvious signs of considerable value, they should be discarded by approved methods, and certainly not directly incinerated (because of mercury). Here in the States, they are disposed of as hazardous waste, just as any material from a hospital. 

Harold


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## LeftyTheBandit (Oct 7, 2009)

I found a great sight on how to make a gas furnace. They look a lot like the one used to start this thread. I have 30lbs of ram chips and was wondering if incinerating them in this type of furnace would be, well... fine-able.. or is the heat generated by these home made furnaces enough to make the exhaust, well.... hmmm.... non fine-able?

When you incinerated this stuff did the neighborhood reek? Was there a huge amount of smoke?


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## Anonymous (Oct 7, 2009)

LeftyTheBandit said:


> I found a great sight on how to make a gas furnace. They look a lot like the one used to start this thread. I have 30lbs of ram chips and was wondering if incinerating them in this type of furnace would be, well... fine-able.. or is the heat generated by these home made furnaces enough to make the exhaust, well.... hmmm.... non fine-able?
> 
> When you incinerated this stuff did the neighborhood reek? Was there a huge amount of smoke?



The furnace would only smoke if the burn was incomplete, just turn your fuel supply back on there's enough heat to reignite the burner which will eliminate your smoke. If you look at the first picture that furnace is loaded with ic's and there is no smoke coming from it.

I'm also fortunate in that I live in a very small village (8) homes and I'm on the outer south edge of town where the breeze predominantly blows from the north west taking any stink south over empty fields.

The corrected weight for the gold powder now bone dry is 29 grams., it was amazing how much water that little bit of powdered gold would hold and how unwillingly the water would release at a slight higher than an ambient temperature.


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## scrapman1077 (Oct 18, 2009)

gustavus, Can you report the final weights of the gold and silver. Thanks scrapman1077


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## leavemealone (Mar 8, 2010)

> gustavus, Can you report the final weights of the gold and silver. Thanks scrapman1077



And I know you threw some of your info out ,but can you try to remember about how many pounds of IC's you started with to arrive at that amount of PM's.Thanks gill.
Johnny


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