# MLCC in molten tin. What will happen?



## stella polaris (Nov 20, 2019)

Depopulating with a chinsel. Creating a lot of solder fragmens. My idea is to electro winning the tin and collect slimes. Now a unexpected little problem have showed up. When seperating the tin from the components the tiny, tiny MLCCs and film resistors join the tin. Like those small little buggers on RAM sticks.

First i was thinking no problem. Just to melt them in to the tin when preparing the feedstock. They will just fall of in the cell and can be cleaned and processed later. Then i realised the tin might be alloyed with the PM. Not actually bad if its takes out the lion part of PM from the MLCC.

So what will happend? Could it be possible to cook the tin a little longer and thereby take out the Pm from the tiny MLCC, not needed to process them later?


----------



## anachronism (Nov 20, 2019)

No mate

Get rid of the Tin using HCl. Roast them to red heat to destroy the HCl, and use Silver as the collector. 

Simplifies the extraction of the Pd as a straight Nitric leach later. 

Edit: Remember the vast majority of these are base metal ones not Noble metal ones so unless your gear is really old or enterprise equipment you'll not recover much at all. 

Jon


----------



## g_axelsson (Nov 20, 2019)

Not much will happen with the MLCC in molten tin. To low temperature for anything to happen, the precious metals are locked into the ceramic body.

And as Jon tells you, they learned how to make nickel based MLCC:s around 2000.

Göran


----------



## stella polaris (Nov 21, 2019)

g_axelsson said:


> Not much will happen with the MLCC in molten tin. To low temperature for anything to happen, the precious metals are locked into the ceramic body.
> 
> And as Jon tells you, they learned how to make nickel based MLCC:s around 2000.
> 
> Göran



Was thinking of cooking the tin in high temperature, 800-900 C . It have high boiling point. Can heat it up to 1200-1300 C with avalibe equipment. I never tried to heat tin so high but i see no real problem. (have done bronze) More slag perhaps but it make no diffrence, it will go in to KOH that works on tin slag as well. 

But if its locked in the ceramic body its not much to do about. Grinding perhaps but its a step i want to avoid 

(I sort the tin when depopulating. Old tin and newer lead free. I am aware of the New MLCC so i sort them as well. I also will clean the tin with magnet before melting. Only the good ones remain but the smallest tiny ones are to time consuming picking up.)


----------



## g_axelsson (Nov 21, 2019)

With those conditions... I think you are on your own. I have no idea on how the ceramic barium titanate will react for example. But I think you will have a lot of slag forming and that the MLCC will end up trapped in slag instead of submerged in molten tin. There's quite a large difference in density so it will float on the surface.

Göran


----------



## stella polaris (Nov 21, 2019)

g_axelsson said:


> With those conditions... I think you are on your own. I have no idea on how the ceramic barium titanate will react for example. But I think you will have a lot of slag forming and that the MLCC will end up trapped in slag instead of submerged in molten tin. There's quite a large difference in density so it will float on the surface.
> 
> Göran



You are right. Did not really consider what else could be in the lot. The MLCC might as well be a potential problem in the electro winning. 

Ill try to just melt it at low temp and skim of slag, MLCC and all other things I did not really consider. That is a nice mess to begin with. :lol: But the feedstock tin gets cleaner. Want to re-use the KOH so go for keeping clean is probably a good idea. The volume slag is quite small and the slag still holds tin and can be worked on later.


----------



## anachronism (Nov 21, 2019)

Why would you want to boil a metal off if you don't need to other than for experimentation purposes because there's no need. Also the type of magnet you use is important for separating the base and noble ones. 

Not sure if you read my post because that's the way to do these.


----------



## stella polaris (Nov 21, 2019)

anachronism said:


> Why would you want to boil a metal off if you don't need to other than for experimentation purposes because there's no need. Also the type of magnet you use is important for separating the base and noble ones.
> 
> Not sure if you read my post because that's the way to do these.





I wondered if i could cook them ( to have it molten a longer period, at higher temperature, in order to the reactions to work. This because they (MLCC) are mixed in, in the solder to be processed. And since i will later collect the slimes (gold, silver) i would not mind if I could have recovered those MLCC ending up in the feedstock buy just cook them in the solder, hoping for them to alloy. Then they would have been done. Now i must recover them or lose them as waste. Never the less I have now dropped the idea.

I am aware of the diffrences in MLCC and how to sort them. Have a half kilo non magnetic but I do not want to go in to palladium before i really know what i do. And the road there is still long. if i started to mess with them now the value of them would probably drop dead.


----------

