RAM BGA processing question

Advertise with us
shop deals on amazon
Shop deals on ebay
xelexo
Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
A

AndrewSuperD

Well-known member
Supporting Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2021
Messages
103
Hey folks! I haven’t posted in a bit because I haven’t processed anything in a bit. But here I am back with another question. I’m processing 2lbs of RAM BGA I purchased from eBay. Here’s the process thus far:

1. Soak chips in HCl for a day to remove solder/tin
2. Wash drain dry
3. Incinerate (Pyrolyze + pan roasting)
4. Ball mill for 2 days
5. Use magnet to separate magnetics but almost nothing collected
6. Wash / rinse burned carbon
7. Added Aquaregia ~500mL HCl ~15mL HNO3
8. Let soak for 1 hour
9. Set beaker on heat for another hour (stirred)
10. Reaction completed added 5mL HNO3 and fumes began again
11. Reaction stopped.
12. Added dusting of Sulphamic Acid with no reaction…
13. Added more 5 mL HNO3 on heat with no fumes
14. Added sulphamic acid with very little reaction at all. Unexpected considering the HNO3 I just added
15. Added more sulphamic to make sure
16. Took off heat and added 350mL H2O

So my question is I now have this greenish opaque liquid. Should I just continue with filter and move forward? Does this look ok?
 

Attachments

  • 69BEBAD5-C073-404E-9656-8CA8B1F42086.png
    69BEBAD5-C073-404E-9656-8CA8B1F42086.png
    8.2 MB · Views: 0
  • 58AF56D7-8FA4-4087-A09C-238A01912031.jpeg
    58AF56D7-8FA4-4087-A09C-238A01912031.jpeg
    1.5 MB · Views: 0
AndrewSuperD said:
Hey folks! I haven’t posted in a bit because I haven’t processed anything in a bit. But here I am back with another question. I’m processing 2lbs of RAM BGA I purchased from eBay. Here’s the process thus far:

1. Soak chips in HCl for a day to remove solder/tin
2. Wash drain dry
3. Incinerate (Pyrolyze + pan roasting)
4. Ball mill for 2 days
5. Use magnet to separate magnetics but almost nothing collected
6. Wash / rinse burned carbon Here it should have been gravity separated and then roasted again.
7. Added Aquaregia ~500mL HCl ~15mL HNO3
8. Let soak for 1 hour
9. Set beaker on heat for another hour (stirred)
10. Reaction completed added 5mL HNO3 and fumes began again
11. Reaction stopped.
12. Added dusting of Sulphamic Acid with no reaction… This has to be done hot, 80-90 C
13. Added more 5 mL HNO3 on heat with no fumes Why in the world did you add Nitrric after Sulfamic??? It beats the purpose of the Sulfamic.
14. Added sulphamic acid with very little reaction at all. Unexpected considering the HNO3 I just added Heat is needed.
15. Added more sulphamic to make sure
16. Took off heat and added 350mL H2O

So my question is I now have this greenish opaque liquid. Should I just continue with filter and move forward? Does this look ok? This still looks like there has been Tin in there
Click to expand...
What happened about asking before doing?
Comments in bold in quote.

As commented in the quote, after pyrolizing and milling you should have roasted it to remove carbon traces.
Then you should have gravity separated it to concentrate the Gold.
At this time you would have had only a small amount of metal to dissolve.
And adding Nitric to it by pipette drop by drop would have avoided the excess Nitric all together.

Was all metals dissolved?
What do the Stannous test say?
 
Hey Yggdrasil. Thanks for the quick reply. Step 3 says pyrolyze +pan roast. I was trying to explain the incinerate. In fact I did pyrolyze, then ball mill, then pan roast for about 6 hours while mixing it with a rod to make sure I get all carbon ashed. Is gravity separation the same thing as washing the burned carbon? I think I just didn’t use the right description? I did not sieve anything because there was literally nothing other than fabric to sieve.

It started raining pretty good so I’ll stannous test in the morning and let you know.

Thanks again.
 
AndrewSuperD said:
Hey Yggdrasil. Thanks for the quick reply. Step 3 says pyrolyze +pan roast. I was trying to explain the incinerate. In fact I did pyrolyze, then ball mill, then pan roast for about 6 hours while mixing it with a rod to make sure I get all carbon ashed. Is gravity separation the same thing as washing the burned carbon? I think I just didn’t use the right description? I did not sieve anything because there was literally nothing other than fabric to sieve.

It started raining pretty good so I’ll stannous test in the morning and let you know.

Thanks again.
Click to expand...
Stannous is our eyes so that is the first thing we do when we think we have Gold in solution.
Are you even sure there is Gold in there?
 
Here’s the stannous from this morning. I’m going to get back to this tomorrow morning. Not exactly sure yet the approach I should take so I’ll crunch on this a bit. Have a great day.
 
All reactions stopped, even with heat, which is why I added more HNO3 and noted that no more reaction occurred while heated. I figured I was done at that point. How do I know if I have a metastanic acid problem? I'm crawling through the forum now. It's amazing how much is out here and how I don't know i need it, until I need it! :)
 
AndrewSuperD said:
All reactions stopped, even with heat, which is why I added more HNO3 and noted that no more reaction occurred while heated. I figured I was done at that point. How do I know if I have a metastanic acid problem? I'm crawling through the forum now. It's amazing how much is out here and how I don't know i need it, until I need it! :)
Click to expand...
The reaction stops when there is no more to dissolve, the Nitric is depleted, the HCl is depleted, the solution is too saturated or too dilute.
So you have added more Nitric and nothing happened, then try to add some more HCl and see, if not successful,
one could decant the solution and start fresh.
If there is more metal left that is.
 
Not trying to be thick about this but how do I tell? I don't see anything not dissolved but I also have a good amount of ball milled die pieces obscuring my view of what's been dissolved and not.
 
AndrewSuperD said:
Not trying to be thick about this but how do I tell? I don't see anything not dissolved but I also have a good amount of ball milled die pieces obscuring my view of what's been dissolved and not.
Click to expand...
That is one of the reasons it should be sifted and gravity separated.
Most likely it is done, silicon dies do not dissolve in AR, not to my knowledge at least.
 
So here we are today. I guess I really screwed this up. I’ve never had a solution so difficult to filter. Crawling through the forum, I found many times Harold, suggesting Hoke’s processes to deal with tin paste (assuming that’s what I have?) might be replaced with incineration to get rid of metastatic acid. So would it be advisable for me to:

1. finish this filtration
2. evaporate the liquid
3. Wash in distilled then dry
4. incinerate the solids
5. Ball mill the solids
6. Boil solids in HCl to remove base metals?

Or, should I heat the liquid back up and try to drop gold? If I try to drop gold, should I slowly heat, evaporate to a syrup, then add HCl and repeat three times to ensure no more nitric?

The stannous test is with 1 drop solution, three drops distilled water, 1 drop stannous test solution. I didn’t have a white spoon so I did my best with filter paper.
 

Attachments

  • C9DE016E-CE5D-4A92-809E-8266AF35BF30.jpeg
    C9DE016E-CE5D-4A92-809E-8266AF35BF30.jpeg
    1.6 MB · Views: 0
  • 75EDDD51-D369-435C-942E-35E860AB015A.jpeg
    75EDDD51-D369-435C-942E-35E860AB015A.jpeg
    1.6 MB · Views: 0
AndrewSuperD said:
The stannous test is with 1 drop solution, three drops distilled water, 1 drop stannous test solution. I didn’t have a white spoon so I did my best with filter paper.
Click to expand...

Using spoons for stannous testing can make it difficult to determine what's all there, especially if you have mixed PM's in solution. Using strips of filter paper for stannous testing makes it easier to distinguish what's all in solution. The tested solution on filter paper has a tendency to somewhat separate out as different color shadow lines, but not always......Just my opinion.

I'm not suggesting you have mixed PM's in solution....
 
eaglekeeper said:
Using spoons for stannous testing can make it difficult to determine what's all there, especially if you have mixed PM's in solution. Using strips of filter paper for stannous testing makes it easier to distinguish what's all in solution. The tested solution on filter paper has a tendency to somewhat separate out as different color shadow lines, but not always......Just my opinion.

I'm not suggesting you have mixed PM's in solution....
Click to expand...
Thanks for the advice!
 
I’m heating the solids tonight while the liquids filter. I moved the glass stir rod. Otherwise the entire surface area is that greenish color. The reddish brown area is the only exception
 

Attachments

  • B65C6582-0184-4981-8E37-015BD3057C53.jpeg
    B65C6582-0184-4981-8E37-015BD3057C53.jpeg
    1.8 MB · Views: 1
AndrewSuperD said:
I’m heating the solids tonight while the liquids filter. I moved the glass stir rod. Otherwise the entire surface area is that greenish color. The reddish brown area is the only exception
Click to expand...
Remind me again why you are heating the solids like that?
 

Latest posts

Back
Top