What about beryllium in IC chips

Ok guys, I have piled up a lot of ic chips and I am ready to get these incinerated. I see a lot of guys processing IC chips but I am wondering how everybody takes precautions in dealing with (possible) beryllium(oxide) dust.

I am always more than careful in dealing with escrap. I even depopulate my boards in a dust free box (see pic) with hammer an chisel. All the chemistry I do I perform in a professional fume hood and I always wear gloves, safety glasses and lab coat.

Eveybody is, of course, interested in gold contents, but I am also interested in beryliium content of IC chips. Who has more information about this subject. My information is that some of the (springy) copper like cpu sockets contain around 2% beryllium metal. Beryllium oxide could be present in components that require good heat conductivaty. Is there berylium present in the epoxy of these kind of chips, like BGA?

Please help me with information, we could all benefit from this.

Ok, I found a datasheet for the chemical composition of a certain BGA package. There is no beryllium. The only components that could be harmfull when incinerated are lead, wich becomes leadoxide (toxic), bariumsulfate, wich becomes bariumsulfide (toxic) and epoxy wich gives off toxic smoke, but we knew that.

If you take proper precautions there doesn't have to be a problem in handling the dust. But there are people out there who pour the washwater straight on the ground or breaking chips with their bare hands because they think "it is just ash".

I will try and find more info

archeonist said:

Ok, I found a datasheet for the chemical composition of a certain BGA package. There is no beryllium. The only components that could be harmfull when incinerated are lead, wich becomes leadoxide (toxic), bariumsulfate, wich becomes bariumsulfide (toxic) and epoxy wich gives off toxic smoke, but we knew that.

If you take proper precautions there doesn't have to be a problem in handling the dust. But there are people out there who pour the washwater straight on the ground or breaking chips with their bare hands because they think "it is just ash".

I will try and find more info

Click to expand...

If possible, please share the datasheet.

Thanks!
James

archeonist said:

Ok, I found a datasheet for the chemical composition of a certain BGA package. There is no beryllium. The only components that could be harmfull when incinerated are lead, wich becomes leadoxide (toxic), bariumsulfate, wich becomes bariumsulfide (toxic) and epoxy wich gives off toxic smoke, but we knew that.

Enough stuff right there to question the sanity of people doing these things "on the barby" when the wind is blowing in the right direction. :lol: :lol:

If you take proper precautions there doesn't have to be a problem in handling the dust. But there are people out there who pour the washwater straight on the ground or breaking chips with their bare hands because they think "it is just ash".

I will try and find more info

Click to expand...

Hehe see the red comment.

@Cosmetal, this is the datasheet I found.

@Anachronism, it just concerns me. I am at the stage of incinerating my chips but I am not 100% sure what compounds to expect. I've done all kinds of refinements, but this one seems something that is hard to control.
First incinerating: what about fumes and smoke, how to control this.
Second: all steps involving grinding and sieving create dust. How can we close to zero particles being airborn..

I've yet to see one person on this forum or other forums who can demonstrate a safe way of burning this stuff in practise. i.e. as they are doing it, not just "here's a design for xxx."

Yeah sure there's ways it can be done but nobody has demonstrated they are doing it.

4metals had a great pot idea with an afterburner that looked interesting however I am not aware of anyone following it up, yet they do plenty of this product.

There are so many designs for the kind of products you're looking at incinerating that nobody can guarantee that you're only going to come across certain chemicals. It's impossible to do so. My heartfelt advice- send it off and get it toll refined it's not worth it. If it's of any relevance this is what I do. I don't incinerate stuff - full stop.

Jon

Hi Jon, thank you for your great advice, I appreciatie it. You have to know that I am very familiar with chemistry as I am a chemistry teacher myself. Maybe this is the reason that I am very careful and that I have questions about how to do this without to many dangers in polluting yourself and your environment.

However, there is one route that is much safer. It is without incinerating or pyrolising. I saw "succsesful engeneer" doing this in his YouTube video's. But he still creates dust when moving the crushed chips to a bucket and so. For me, if I should do it myself, I would ball mill the non incenerated chips, in a totally 100% closed tank (old gastank that I turned into a ball mill). After the grinding, and waiting for the dust to settle, I would fill the ball mill with water and ball mill it for an hour or so. By then the dust would be mixed enough to create a sludge without having to be concerned about dust getting airborne. Sieving could be done wet, still no dust. After that, the sieved sludge could be separated using a bleu bowl.

Advantage for this method: no dust, no toxic metal oxides and no toxic epoxy fumes.
Disadvantage: longer processing time, maybe lower yield (haven't seen evidence for this, "succsesfull engeneer" got 0,5g of gold out of 1lb mixed ic chips, that doesn't seem to bad). But everybody that says that the yield would be bad, has to come with evidence I think.

I have searched for an example of liquefying of the epoxy in an IC chip and find none. I am currently enrolled in an organic chemistry class with the idea to chemically remove the epoxy leaving the gold wires intact for cleaning in a solvent then not having to deal with crushing, ball mills, incineration, beryllium problems. Has anyone else thought and worked at this possible method?

hank hettinger said:

I have searched for an example of liquefying of the epoxy in an IC chip and find none. I am currently enrolled in an organic chemistry class with the idea to chemically remove the epoxy leaving the gold wires intact for cleaning in a solvent then not having to deal with crushing, ball mills, incineration, beryllium problems. Has anyone else thought and worked at this possible method?

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It is called wet ashing but that stuff is not advisable unless done with proper hardware. It involves hot concentrated sulfuric acid and that is scary stuff even for skilled and seasoned pro's.

Yep, wet ashing wil get rid of a lot of problems but creates one big safety issue. You get boiling sulfuric with temperatures over 200 degrees celcius. Getting a drop on you will almost certainly creates third degree burnes at the blink of an eye. Gloves will not help you.

But maybe there is another way, some kind of solvent that will do the job in days or weeks by letting the chips submerged. Or maybe a solvent that will not dissolve the epoxy but maybe weakens it so you only have to ball mill for a short time.

I started this topic about a possible beryllium hazard. I haven't found evidence for it but I treat this material as If there would be beryllium in it. There is for sure cadmium present in the epoxy of some chips and I don't want any of this stuff on me, in my lungs or in my work area and eventually in my house.

So eveything I do from depopulating to refining, my goal is zero dust. Not that you will get to really zero particles, but If you aim for that you will be safe.

Seeing people playing with incinerated chips on YouTube concerns me big time that is why I started this topic. I think a lot of people out there do this around the house and think they're dealing with ash and carbon. Well they do, it is ash, but not the same ash as in a fireplace. This ash is loaded with heavy metals, it is dangerous stuff. By the way there is carbon, but after incinerating there shouldn't be much left of it, so the rest of the ash is very low in carbon and high in metaloxides of all kind.

The filler in the black plastic is mostly silicon dioxide, SiO₂, one of the most common minerals on the Earth and totally inert. That is what most of the ash is made up from. I'm mostly concerned with the bromated and phosphated fire retardant included in the plastic and any strange organic products that can be created in the smoke when the plastic is burned.
https://electroiq.com/2004/10/step-10-encapsulation-imaterials-processes-and-equipment-i/
https://polymerinnovationblog.com/polymers-electronic-packaging-part-one-introduction-mold-compounds/
http://www.ti.com/lit/an/snoa286/snoa286.pdf
https://electroiq.com/2003/10/mold-compound/
https://www.google.com/search?q=encapsulating+epoxy+ic+filler+leadframe

Any metal oxides included in the ash should mostly come from the leadframe (leading into, not the metal lead) and contain copper, zinc, tin, lead (if pre ROHS electronics) and nickel. Cadmium isn't included in any modern stuff since it is regulated in the ROHS regulations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROHS

Göran

That's correct, cadmium isn't present in modern stuff. But a lot of incinerated chips are from old scrap like early nineties, as far as I know these chips could contain cadmium. By the way, thanks for your information Göran.

Cheers Goran

To be very honest I've always taken the approach that if I don't know exactly what's in it with absolutely no guesswork - I'm not burning it.

anachronism said:

Cheers Goran

To be very honest I've always taken the approach that if I don't know exactly what's in it with absolutely no guesswork - I'm not burning it.

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That is the safe way to approach it.

I'm just doing small batches and always with some sort of afterburner to force the gases given off to go through a flame with plenty of air to get a complete combustion. And I'm only doing it with high grade material as the black top from plastic BGA chip, never with populated circuit boards or similar scrap.

Göran

Second: all steps involving grinding and sieving create dust. How can we close to zero particles being airborn..


What about under water, and siveing, much the same way bubble hash is made?

Sleepydann said:

Second: all steps involving grinding and sieving create dust. How can we close to zero particles being airborn..


What about under water, and siveing, much the same way bubble hash is made?

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Yes, or moist, this is my plan.

Are there any refiners out there who have tried to ball mill non pyrolised and non incinerated chips? I am planning to give it a try.
My idea is as follows. I will ball mill a bunch of non burned chips for a few days. Eventually it will be as fine as chalk powder. I know that one of the theoretical issues is that the gold will be smeared all over the fine epoxy particles. But if you dont burn your chips, there is no free carbon so you could just dissolve in AR and you dont have to worry that your gold ions get adsorbed onto the carbon. The pain is filtering off the fine powder I think. Any comments on this?

Not quite. Your gold will not end up on epoxy particles but on metallic parts from inside IC. Then you will have to dissolve all metal from inside to get that gold. That will make recovery longer and mire expensive.

patnor1011 said:

Not quite. Your gold will not end up on epoxy particles but on metallic parts from inside IC. Then you will have to dissolve all metal from inside to get that gold. That will make recovery longer and mire expensive.

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Yes I see the problem now. Still I am going to give it a try because I wonder what percentage will get smeared on. For this I'm going to use the little ram bga chips that were treated with HCl, so no tin will be present. I have a few kgs of these. They should yield around 4-5g a kg. My ball mill isn't ready yet, but in a few week I hope it is. I will let you know the result.