# ELECTRONIC COMPONENT GOLD RECOVERY



## Anonymous (Jul 18, 2008)

Hello everyone, 

So this is my first post on this wonderful forum where i see alot of like minded people... I hope i get the chance to discuss many topics with most of you...

So i've been doing gold recovery and refining for a few years now and ive gotten rather good at it, but ive only dealt with jewelry, and scrap gold. Never electronic components. And truthfully im not very well educated in the workings of mother boards and cpus etc...

i would like to venture into the world of PM recovery from electronics...

And i would like your opinions on the processes involved. So far ive only taken apart old cell phones (one razer and one v60 both moterola) and ive notice alot of yellow metallic substance which would appear to be plating. 

So my question is, would you guys recomment just crushing these items into tiny particles and placing in Aqua Regia. Does this usually yield results?

and ive read that there are other hazardous metals in the electronics, does this effect the recovery and disposal process?


Thank you guys for your help!


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## NuggetHuntingFool (Jul 19, 2008)

Welcome to the forum.

You can find some videos at www.goldrecovery.us that show the process.

If you have lots of computer components for gold recovery, the remainder will need to be disposed of properly in older components. Especially because they're non-compliant with ROHS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Directive

Click around this forum and search some terms.


Good Luck


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## Harold_V (Jul 19, 2008)

overman said:


> So i've been doing gold recovery and refining for a few years now and ive gotten rather good at it, but ive only dealt with jewelry, and scrap gold. Never electronic components. And truthfully im not very well educated in the workings of mother boards and cpus etc...
> snip---(good stuff)
> So my question is, would you guys recomment just crushing these items into tiny particles and placing in Aqua Regia. Does this usually yield results?


If you have experience refining karat gold, you likely understand that dissolving everything in the same solution so the gold can be precipitated is not in your best interest. Although karat gold can be dissolved directly in AR, you probably know and understand the process of inquartation, to remove the base metal and silver. Silver can be troublesome when dissolving gold, but those problems can be overcome by processing material with great surface area and thin cross sections, although generally at the cost of inferior quality gold. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, I strongly suggest you acquire a copy of Hoke's book and become familiar. 

Precipitating gold from dirty solutions presents its own problems. While GSP developed a proprietary system for doing so with excellent results, those of us that use conventional processes do not enjoy equal success. I'm leading up to what is important for you to know if you choose to process e scrap. 

In order to precipitate gold of high quality, it's more than desirable to eliminate base metals instead of dissolving them along with the values. I never recommend AR as a recovery method with rare exceptions, one of them being that the substrate not be metallic. 

If you have a ready source of nitric, and are buying at what is a reasonable price (less than $8.00 gallon), you may enjoy simply dissolving base metals that way. If not, by reading the work-arounds that are being promoted on this forum, you may find that you can eliminate the base metals with reagents that are commonly available. I have no experience using these methods, but others here do have, and can help guide you. 

Don't expect to get rich processing e scrap. It's labor intensive, but a great hobby. 

Enjoy!

Welcome to the forum. 

Harold


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## lazersteve (Jul 19, 2008)

Overman,

Welcome to the forum. 

Having refined my fair share of both e-scrap and jewelry I can tell you you will most likely be disappointed in the yields verses labor required with e-scrap. 

If you have been refining jewelry you are accustomed to gold yields in the 40-75% range from a batch of scrap. With e-scrap your yields will be in the 0-0.5% range per batch.

In addition to the yields verses labor you'll also have to contend the storage of huge volumes of scrap materials to facilitate your operation.

I agree with Harold, processing e-scrap is a fun and makes for a great hobby, but don't expect huge percentage yields from e-scrap, because it's just not there.

If you have access to a large storage facility and free or nearly free e-scrap in volume, you may actually see a profit from an e-scrap refining venture.

I still process e-scrap just because I have tons of it on hand and can't see tossing it out. The way I look at it, if the scrap has been sitting in storage for quite sometime anyways, just process it with one of the slow, yet effective methods I have demonstrated. These methods require little attention while processing. In the mean time focus your daily efforts and labor on the highest yield form of scrap you have. By processing in this parallel fashion, your time spent waiting on the slow processes begins to form a cycle which will yield gold on a regular schedule. These low yields will eventually add up over time.

Have fun and be safe,

Steve[/code]


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