PM from CD or CD-R?

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

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

TommyBerlin70

New member
Joined
Nov 18, 2012
Messages
2
Location
Berlin/Germany
Has anyone ever cd's or cd-r's or similar recycled?
I found nothing with the Forum search.
I found an article at the web about this sorry it's in german but maybe google translation service helps a little bit.
http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/rubin/rbin2_01/studieren/index.html

I find this interesting because old cd's are available everywhere.

Best Regards
Tommy

edit: According to report are 10 mg of silver or 9 mg of gold per cd included depending on the type.
 
While there are a few CDs that have a low-grade optic diode 'eye' that is gold plated, that is the only 'easy' bits that are available, typically. One video I did on this is [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pbJD2rSniw[/youtube]

Everything else (whatever that may be in total, I have no data) is in the components on the boards and perhaps a bit on the pins.

The reason you don't find a lot of data on this forum (though there is some, this topic has been discussed many times) is that there really isn't enough to mess with for a backyard refiner - either because of the cost to recover, the waste of chemicals, dangers, etc. (again, discussed on the forum at length as to the 'reasons' why not everything that has PMs is worth recovering yourself - many times it is best to just "get the fast penny, not the last penny").

Best to sell the boards to an accumulator, that will then sell off to a refiner. There are many on this board that buy the cards from the CDs, hard drives, etc., the rest is just metal scrap, which is also not heavily discussed on this forum.
 
There may be something valuable on certain types. They are being recycled or collected in recycling centers however you will spend thousands of dollars trying to get hundreds of dollars if you attempt to do it yourself.
I would say that if buyers do not pay for them, we cant make money out of them. I would look up for what they do want to buy, then I will know what to look for and CD or DVD disks are not one of that things.
 
Hi all

I'm interested in CDs too (not CD DRIVES!!) I know it contains silver; DVDs contains gold and/or silver but how much i dont know..
Silver and gold are used in optic discs as a reflective layer (like in mirrors we use silver paint)
Some Discs uses aluminum though..
I actually etched the printable layer and the lacker of a CD ROM with Sodium hydroxide + hot water.. i was very exited seeing the "silver" layer exposed so easily..
It wasn't aluminum as it haven't reacted with NaOH..

I'm still a novice (just registered today) so if anyone can reproduce what i did and confirm its really silver, please tell us.. I would be glad if someone could also volunteers to make a test on the yield as i dont have the skills yet to do that myself..
 
Hi All - just a thought, what if one takes a CD cleaner, change the polishing disc's to course sand paper and grind off the layers in question, probably work on HD platters to.

Deano
 
NoIdea said:
Hi All - just a thought, what if one takes a CD cleaner, change the polishing disc's to course sand paper and grind off the layers in question, probably work on HD platters to.

Deano

Noidea

My GEOMOD cell can strip a hd platter in about 3-5 minutes.



modtheworld44
 
I m not an expert in chemistry but i know that aluminum will dissolve in Sodium hydroxide (NaOH) so I'm sure the metallic layer i exposed is not aluminum, since it didn't dissolved
But i can't say it is silver, either ..

Disc i tested is a Verbatim 52x CD-R
 
hard drive disk, mostly a cobalt alloy carbon based overcoat and a lubricant on aluminum or glass disk coated using vacuum desposition or sputtering, very little platinum is included is some disks but not enough to be able to recover it economically, others can have High iron based material
 
Thanks butcher that was a very informative post about hard drive discs; i always wondered if it was profitable to recycle those ones..

Here is my little research on CD DVD discs:

CD-ROMs/DVD-ROMs
Commercial grade: aluminium is most frequently used
Archival grade: silver or gold(longer life expectancies ,better reflectivity)

CD-Rs/DVD-Rs (recordable)
Silver, silver alloys and gold (Aluminium is not used because it may react with the dyes used as storage layer)

CD-RW/DVD-RWs (rewritable)
Usually use Aluminium reflective layers, because the storage layer (phase changing film) degrades faster than aluminium
 
The links did not work.

How much does each CD cost, how much does it cost to make one, they are made to store data Music and so on, how much did research and development of the product cost, how much does it cost to get them to the buyer, and so on, can they put much high priced metal in it and still sell it for a profit, many things may contain gold silver or some other metal, I have not seen the links you are talking about, but I have heard the had CD disk that had gold in them, but with modern technology and sputtering or other techniques they can make things using very little of these metals, lets say for the sake of argument they used 3 cents worth of gold, and it cost you 10 cents worth of fuel and 10 cents worth of acid, and two days work to recover the gold, then you have cost of refining, and melting....

The question is first does it have the metal, how much; can you recover and then refine it at a profit?

Many rocks can contain gold, heck some mountains are just plum full of it, but a miner may make more money breaking that mountain down to gravel and selling the gravel than he could ever make from mining the gold out of that rock.
 
butcher said:
Many rocks can contain gold, heck some mountains are just plum full of it, but a miner may make more money breaking that mountain down to gravel and selling the gravel than he could ever make from mining the gold out of that rock.
I went to look at some property on the ocean here in Ecuador - beautiful place - and the land is 'full of gold' (according to the current owner and various testimonies from locals, etc. - no assays, etc.).

From what I understand, much of the land here does contain various amounts of gold and some places are well worth working.

HOWEVER, there is one little 'gotcha' that stops folks around here - the government says that any gold taken from any land is THEIRS and you must turn it in or face huge penalties, etc.! Oh, you might get by with a tiny sluice box in a barn or something, but to get any serious payback you would need an operation big enough that would very (very) likely be spotted.

So, there's just one more something to watch out for in your quest for "gold, at any price".

The question is not "is there gold in there", it is (and always should be, IMHO) "is it worth the work and effort?" - I hate as much as anyone to know I'm tossing away pennies, but when you know it costs dollars to get them, something just isn't right!

One story though, about 20 years ago I was tasked to toss the "old" computers from our company when they were upgrading - we must have put 300, 386/486 right into the dumpsters. funny thing is, I recall clearly telling my boss that there was gold in them but we both agreed that it wasn't worth the work and effort...... - wasn't then, but would have been worth holding on to them, had we had the vision..., - so, just where is that 'line'?
 
(Sorry butcher those are underlined titles not links)

If you want the source of the info here it is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_media_preservation#Optical_disc_types..
You are wright about the profitability question you asked.. but i think better we test than make simple suppositions.. thats why i posted in the first place..
CD-Rs are widely available if there was 3 cents profit in each one and i can process thousands of them maybe it will cover all my expenses and make me a good margin of profit..
So like i said it's subject to testing..
If anyone had made the test please tell us..
or if anyone feel it can do it please go ahead and keep us informed

If my sources are correct, only CD-Rs and DVD-Rs uses exclusively PMs, so if someone want to test, do with this type of discs..
Hints:
Sodium Hydroxide + Hot Water will expose the metallic layer in no time
I think Nitric acid or aqua regia will then dissolve the silver or gold exposed

(i think Multi layer discs processing will be different as the architecture of the layers is different)
 
If you can do it with profit you deserve Nobel prize for science. You have to try it to really find out if you cant hear from people who know what they talk about. Enough said.
 
From the link you referenced:

CD-Rs/DVD-Rs (recordable) are recordable, write-once discs, which use photosensitive organic dye just below the reflective layer; the dye undergoes a chemical change when exposed to specific laser light beams, DVDs. Both gold and silver will outlast the organic dyes, which will decay over time. Aluminum is not used because it may cause reactions with the dyes.
The data layer, supported by the polycarbonate substrate can be metallic or dye-based, depending on the disc type
The reflective and data layers of CDs are just below the label and a thin sheet of polycarbonate substrate. A much thicker layer of the substrate supports and protects the bottom of the disc. The reflective and data layers of DVDs are in the center of the disc structure, housed between two equal layers of polycarbonate substrate. Because the data layer of CDs is more exposed than DVDs, a thin metal lacquer layer is used to protect the surface of the CD. The top of a CD is delicate and fragile; the bottom is merely a transparent protective covering.[2]
For preservation purposes: Gold CD-R (Compatible Disc-Recordable) and DVD-R (Digital Video Disc-Recordable or Digital Versatile Disc-Recordable) discs are preferred by experts over aluminum and silver for reliable long-term backup storage—the reflective layer of the optical disc is gold.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok no doubt some do have gold and silver Question is it worth it to process.
Only way to know is to try and prove it to yourself.
Now you need could set up a furnace complete with after burner chambers, a scrubber, and bag filters, collect a few thousand of these disks, and burn them, sift through the ashes and see if you could find a tiny button of gold.

Some reason I cannot see enough gold in the dye to be worth messing with, for me anyway.
I would not waste my time trying to find out.
That is just my opinion.
Enough said
 
I have several hundreds of dvd-r, i will definetely give it a try, So I should just prepare a hot solution of NaOH and put the dvds In til the surface is dissolved?
I'll do that for the forum :)
 
VanMarco said:
I have several hundreds of dvd-r, i will definetely give it a try, So I should just prepare a hot solution of NaOH and put the dvds In til the surface is dissolved?
I'll do that for the forum :)

What you propose to do will only work for CD-R and not DVD-R.

DVDs have a different construction from CDs. To open up a DVD-R you simply hard-flex the disc and the two layers will seperate opening up the recording layers.
 
patnor1011 said:
If you can do it with profit you deserve Nobel prize for science. You have to try it to really find out if you cant hear from people who know what they talk about. Enough said.

Current activities lean towards a profit in these because my metal recycler pays by the pound. Somebody must be making money on the metals within.
 
joem said:
patnor1011 said:
If you can do it with profit you deserve Nobel prize for science. You have to try it to really find out if you cant hear from people who know what they talk about. Enough said.

Current activities lean towards a profit in these because my metal recycler pays by the pound. Somebody must be making money on the metals within.

I'm thinking there's some confusion going on in this thread, in one post you have CDR (drives) being discussed and others you have CDR (discs) being discussed. I believe Patnor was responding to the idea of profiting off the discs, not the drives themselves.
 
Back
Top