# Gold extraction from Integrated circuits (ram) ??



## amitoha23 (Nov 5, 2013)

Hello all ,

i have followed the instruction to extract gold from IC .
i did incineration of the IC . shake them to powder , filter just the powder (metals was magnetically taken away )
put powder in AR , boil a few hours . and filter .

after testing with test solution i have not seen traces of gold . i used 250 grams of IC in this test .

what did i do wrong ?

Regards
Amit


----------



## butcher (Nov 5, 2013)

Amit, 
You did not really give us a good description of the process you used, or much to go by to give you a good answer, so for us to help you figure out where you may have made a mistake or a bunch of mistakes, and give you a good answer is hard to do. 

i have followed the instruction to extract gold from IC .
i did incineration of the IC . shake them to powder , filter just the powder (metals was magnetically taken away )

After incineration, and crushing you should have seen some fine metal mixed in with the powder ash, very careful panning of the ash from these fine wires, should have left you with the metals, these would be the base metals along with any value the IC's contained, at this point separating the base metals from the values would be advised).


put powder in AR , boil a few hours . and filter.

Did you put the ash powder into aqua regia? or just the metals? Did you put base metals along with values into solution? How much nitric was used for how much metals? was there tin involved? Did you deNOx the solution and test it for values? What color was the solution a yellow or dirty green to black color?
Trying to leach metal from all that ash in solution is not advised.
The legs of the IC's can contain base metals, putting values into solution with base metals, is not advised, it can complicate the solution, making it harder to precipitate gold using chemical reagents, also if not all of the base metals are dissolved, your values will be left behind on the undissolved metals, if you tried to leach the ash, you most likely would not see the fine metal left behind or brown powdered values left in the ash after you leached some base metals out of the ash, basically you may not have gotten gold into the aqua regia or kept it there, or you may not have gotten much into solution,the gold would cement back out of solution onto any undissolved metal, and could have remained in the ash. 

after testing with test solution i have not seen traces of gold . i used 250 grams of IC in this test .

How are you testing, to determine you have gold in solution?, once dissolved you will not see gold, this is where your stannous chloride becomes your way to see the gold, this test is very sensitive for gold, so it will react even with only traces of gold in solution, it will tell you have gold in solution, it will not tell you how much gold you have, also for this test to work properly your solution would need the free nitric acid or oxidizer removed from solution, just as gold being precipitated chemically would.

What color was the solution bright clear yellow solution of gold or a green to black solution of base metal ash and possibly gold?

what did i do wrong ?

You could have done only one thing wrong and the whole process would not work, or you could have done everything wrong and have a very big mess, It is hard to say I do not know all of the details, unless you have a good understanding of aqua regia and how to use it, and a good understanding of how to recover and refine metals, you will most likely do many things wrong, this stuff is not as easy as its sounds when you read about it.

If you are not skilled already in recovery and refining metals, and using aqua regia, you most likely done many things wrong, (especially with using this to leach a dirty material like ash from electronic scrap, mixed in ash), this is where understanding what Hokes book teaches, and doing the experiments in the book will help, the book will also help you to learn to test metals in solution, and how to eliminate trash (ash) and base metals before you put your values into solution,and how some base metals like tin become a very big problem when put into solution with gold, the forum also will help you to learn, How to deal with waste, and how to work safely, how to recover values mechanically from electronic scrap, and how to use the aqua regia, basically studying the forum can help you with most any problem you will encounter.

If you have gold in solution it will cement out with copper, if your gold is not in solution it most likely was left in the ash or left with undissolved base metals.

Without knowing details and how skilled you are or how much understanding of the recovery and refining process you have, it is hard to answer your question, but my gut feeling is your biggest problem is that you have not studied enough yet, and have made many mistakes.


----------



## amitoha23 (Nov 5, 2013)

Thank you for your very detailed answer .

i will try to be more accurate , 

1) i took 250g of IC from computer ram , and incinerate them .
2) i brake them to fine ash , you can see the silicon chip and some metal (chip legs )
3) i used magnet to pick the legs from the ash , until not more magnet metal in the ash .
4) i have filtered the ash to remove the silicon chip. 

* i have not notice any fine metal in the powder . 

i put the remaining ash in AR . (only the ash ) i have kept aside the silicon chips and the base metals .
boiled it for a few hours . after filtration you can notice light green color solution (transparent ) .
i have used very little Nitric (a drop at a time ) until no reaction accrue . 

i did not denox the solution , and tested it with stannous chloride (that have been tested to verify its good ) 
no traces of gold . 

i have some skills of extracting gold , this is the first time i tried to get gold out of IC .

Thanks for your help 
Amit


----------



## samuel-a (Nov 5, 2013)

amitoha23 said:


> 4) i have filtered the ash to remove the silicon chip.



Amit,

This step could be problematic.
Reason is twofold, 1. the strainer can strain out some (if not all) of the gold bonding wires. 2. the silicon chips usually still have the some of "balls" from soldering (so as the metals leasd/frames).

Since the silicon doesn't react too much to AR (though, it does contain miniscule amounts of copper and other metals in it), there's not much sense in removing them from the ashes.

Memory chips are quite unique in the way of the materials composing it, namely the magnetic base metals (leads/frames) that are very easily removed with magnets.
Leaching the ashes a second time could prove a productive step in my opinion.


----------



## butcher (Nov 5, 2013)

If this was the ash you panned off, it may not contain gold (much depends on panning skill, the ash is light and should pan off from very fine gold wire, panning skill would be important to remove gold from the very fine wire, and gold content to begin with), it does sound like there was at least some copper in the ash (green color), I do not know if your solution contains gold or not.

To check the solution with stannous chloride you should make sure to de-NOx the solution, even if you used a minimum nitric, you could still have enough free nitric to keep stannous from reducing the gold,
GSP reported he had luck with diluting the solution with a lot of water (5 times if my memory is correct, I never tried it), you can de-NOx using several methods sulfamic acid, evaporation method, or adding a bit of gold to consume nitric acid...

Also you should have a standard gold solution (or make one to test your stannous chloride).

When testing you can just take a small sample to test, treating this small sample to remove free HNO3 (with a little sulfamic acid or other means), and then testing it, sometimes it is easier to deal with a very small amount when testing a large batch of solution to see if it contains values, where messing with the large batch may not be worth the time or chemicals to de-NOx and prepare for the test.


----------



## jeneje (Nov 5, 2013)

Another method to panning is to use a blue bowl, http://www.blackcatmining.com/photos/blue-bowl.jpg I have found it works great to help remove the ash, leaving the fine gold wires behind.
Ken


----------



## amitoha23 (Nov 5, 2013)

i will try to de-nox , and test it again. 
as you all know it wil take some time . i will update in a few days .

thank you
Amit


----------



## patnor1011 (Nov 5, 2013)

That ash should be washed with water to get rid at least 80% of it. Carbon will absorb some of your god when it is dissolved.


----------



## Buzz (Nov 6, 2013)

> Another method to panning is to use a blue bowl, http://www.blackcatmining.com/photos/blue-bowl.jpg I have found it works great to help remove the ash, leaving the fine gold wires behind.
> Ken



I was hoping someone would try a blue bowl for the panning.
Guess what Santa is bringing me for Christmas! 8) 

Thanks Jeneje

Buzz


----------



## jeneje (Nov 6, 2013)

Buzz said:


> > Another method to panning is to use a blue bowl, http://www.blackcatmining.com/photos/blue-bowl.jpg I have found it works great to help remove the ash, leaving the fine gold wires behind.
> > Ken
> 
> 
> ...


Your welcome Buzz, PM me if you have any problems with it, there is a trick to using it, but, once you have it down it works like a charm. 
Ken


----------



## niteliteone (Nov 6, 2013)

I hate it when links are posted and then in the future become useless, so here is a picture of my blue bowl ready to run.


----------



## amitoha23 (Nov 7, 2013)

very nice setup. do you have a valve to regulate flow ?
i will look for one (blue bowl )

by the way , i have a few pounds of old IC , Not ram just mix IC , seem to be from the 80-90's . is it worth going to the same process of gold extracting ?
Regards
Amit


----------



## niteliteone (Nov 7, 2013)

amitoha23 said:


> very nice setup. do you have a valve to regulate flow ?
> i will look for one (blue bowl )
> 
> by the way , i have a few pounds of old IC , Not ram just mix IC , seem to be from the 80-90's . is it worth going to the same process of gold extracting ?
> ...


On the hose going into the bowl between the white and yellow connectors is a black ball valve for regulating water flow into the bowl.
On the IC's my answer is not really what you would want to hear, we wont know until they are processed to find out. Their are a few threads that describe what many IC's contain, but most people don't post on the items they failed to recover PM's from.
A picture would help to identify the types of chips you have.


----------



## kurkim (Nov 10, 2013)

Hi, A quick observation, I just did 4 lbs of ram chips and only found a dime size of gold bounding wires at the very end of panning. Is it possible you have such a small amount of gold it is hard to see?


----------

