processed ceramic cpu

Hello .
I have around 300+ aprocessed ceramic cpu they were mix of 486 -386- pentium pro and other older and some of really unknown old ceramic . If anyone interested in buying them let me know . All were broken and were processed by AR .

Rojdit said:

Hello .
I have around 300+ aprocessed ceramic cpu they were mix of 486 -386- pentium pro and other older and some of really unknown old ceramic . If anyone interested in buying them let me know . All were broken and were processed by AR .

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So do I understand this right :?: you are trying the sell the ceramic AFTER you have processed them for the gold :?: (meaning you have already taken the value out of them)

Kurt

Rojdit said:

Hello .
I have around 300+ aprocessed ceramic cpu they were mix of 486 -386- pentium pro and other older and some of really unknown old ceramic . If anyone interested in buying them let me know . All were broken and were processed by AR .

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What do you think they are worth? And how much is the bridge that comes with them?

I remember a post several years ago from, I believe, Mic who was buying them to grind and leach to get more gold out of them. I don't know if he was successful since we've had several posts from senior members stating that there is no gold embedded in the ceramic material.

Some people do seem to feel they have value. I'm not one of them but still haven't been able to convince myself to let go of the buckets full I've accumulated.

FWIW,

Mike

In the past when i ran cpu's i run certain types whole. When they came out the process about 10% where broken and scrap, 90% were whole ceramic blanks. I had a fellow from Austraila who would give me 20 cents a blank and pay the postage. He didn't use them for metal recovery. Not sure what he was really doing with them.

If Rojdit is selling ceramic that look like this, then maybe the could be worth buying.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=12845&hilit=Pentium+pro+cpu%27s&start=220#p128293

Some pic's would be of help!

Phil

gold4mike said:

I remember a post several years ago from, I believe, Mic who was buying them to grind and leach to get more gold out of them. I don't know if he was successful since we've had several posts from senior members stating that there is no gold embedded in the ceramic material.

Some people do seem to feel they have value. I'm not one of them but still haven't been able to convince myself to let go of the buckets full I've accumulated.

FWIW,

Mike

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Yes that is correct it was Mic that was working on that project I sent him some chip's to work with but he was never successful in recovering anything from them. Some of them were like the ones that were shown in Phil's link.

I haven't had the time to process them for a while so I have a few bucket's of them to run here in the next few month's. I'm not going to promise a process or any yield values but I will see what I can produce and share.

I can positivly say this there are some values in some of the ceramic chip's. Not going to say which ones though.

This is a link to the picture of a test that I ran a few years ago on 10 Intel 186 ceramic chip's after they had been processed for any exterior gold. didn't get a yield on them when I ran them. The ceramic was crushed to fine powder and then ran in some AR. It did test positive for traces of gold inside the ceramic substrate.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=6026&start=140#p81689

Palladium said:

In the past when i ran cpu's i run certain types whole. When they came out the process about 10% where broken and scrap, 90% were whole ceramic blanks. I had a fellow from Austraila who would give me 20 cents a blank and pay the postage. He didn't use them for metal recovery. Not sure what he was really doing with them.

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We're starting our own space program. These little pieces of ceramic make great re-entry heat shields.

jason_recliner said:

Palladium said:

In the past when i ran cpu's i run certain types whole. When they came out the process about 10% where broken and scrap, 90% were whole ceramic blanks. I had a fellow from Austraila who would give me 20 cents a blank and pay the postage. He didn't use them for metal recovery. Not sure what he was really doing with them.

Click to expand...

We're starting our own space program. These little pieces of ceramic make great re-entry heat shields.

Click to expand...

8) i think Iron's said they make good honing stones, the stone i use to sharpen my drywall knife has lasted 20 years.

I have never recovered anything of value after processing CPUs. I simply remove the plates if possible and process those separately, and break the actual chips up into 4-5 large pieces and process in that way.

I am sure there are some chips, somewhere, that might have Au, Pt, Ag or some other metal inside the chip, however I have not been fortunate enough to find any in all the thousands of CPUs I have processed.

Scott

Hello

This is Rojdit

Hope everyone doing well , it’s been 6 years now since I posted this , I forgot my log-in so I created new one ,

I got married and been busy with work and family , I decided to put those pulverized Cpus in 5 gallon pocked and store them in storage , last week I decided to process them in AR , I bought some large plastic containers and put them all in there , I left it for 3 days but I would stirrer it every couple hours , test the solution and indeed it was positive for gold ( dark purple )
I decanted the solution and removed the crushed Cpus , I have 2 problems now , first me being inpatient I did put the patch of at least 150lb to 200lb all once in AR , that made me be like the crazy fast rabbit like the one in Butchers story !
Second problem I have some yellow precipitation looks like Tungesten when I was filtering the AR , I did not precipitated the gold from AR yet I will in couple of days I am waiting for SM ordered from eBay .

So I decided to settle with whatever the amount of gold in the solution I have and I don’t have the time anymore to wash and filter the pulverized cpu which still have a lot of the AR trapped in it , not to mention the yellow precipitation,
I will offer it for free to anyone interested in getting them , if you in Dallas area let me know, i have attached some pictures of it .

Thank you

You can recover values from ceramic cpus, if they were previously processed using AR. However, the value comes from the AR being absorbed by the ceramic substrate, during processing. I processed hundreds of pounds of ceramics before I figured out that's where the values were coming from.
I've recovered values from processed ceramics many times, but the values were minimal, and the expense was significant.
In the last few years that I processed PMs, I just pre-soaked the ceramics in straight Hcl for a couple of hours.
You only need just enough Hcl to cover the chips. Do not add any type of oxidizer, and don't add a bubbler, this can cause values to be dissolved. After a couple of hours I decant the Hcl, and fill with fresh Hcl, and add nitric as needed, and apply agitation.
That will keep the absorbed values to a minimum.

To make sure I understood what you said .
First hand You soak them in HCL and after a few hours you decant the hcl and then add fresh hcl to the ceramics and slowly add nitric as it needed ?

If that’s what you mean

If you are going to mix hcl and nitric in second step , What is the purpose of putting them in just hcl solution first ? When you decant used hcl from first step , you tested for any positive value ?

Thank you

I think most of the gold from those Ceramic cpus are trapped in what looks like tungsten precipitation, little drops on Stannous chloride is positive also it’s pretty dark purple as you see in picture , I kept those cpus for 6 years I knew they had a lot of gold trapped in it ,

Rcsrcs said:

To make sure I understood what you said .
First hand You soak them in HCL and after a few hours you decant the hcl and then add fresh hcl to the ceramics and slowly add nitric as it needed ?

If that’s what you mean

If you are going to mix hcl and nitric in second step , What is the purpose of putting them in just hcl solution first ? When you decant used hcl from first step , you tested for any positive value ?

Thank you

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Ceramic CPU substrate is porous, and being such will absorb liquid. Strait Hcl will not dissolve gold on its own, without the addition of excess oxygen, an oxidizer, a nitrate, etc. So by soaking the ceramics in Hcl first, it will (pre)saturate the chips, which will inhibit the chips absorbing gold from the pregnant AR solution which you will make after you add the nitric, and the gold starts dissolving.

Added:
When testing the processed chips with stannous, is it the solution that is testing positive, or the chips/sludge?
If it's the chips/sludge, that is because that material soaked up pregnant AR, when you processed the chips the first time. If it's the solution that's testing positive, then you did not dissolve all of the exposed gold the first time you processed them.

It seems, from the pic's, that you removed the silicon chips inside, and were able to dissolve the gold behind them.
Merged Topics on Ceramic CPU Recovery with YieldsGuillotine style coin press

I noticed also, that on some of the CPU's with the tungsten caps, (like the Pentium Pro type), the solder is still on. Old GSP said that, that solder hold values in them... you might be able to "squeeze" some more values out of them.

Take care!

Phil

Johnny

The Solution tested positive as well as the sludge ....

I definitely didn’t get even half the value of gold from almost 300lb of really high grade cpus ( Intel pentium pros , Intel 486 , 386 , toshiba etc ... ) when I processed it 6 years ago , now looking back I know I rushed the whole process not to mention didn’t know 10% of what I know now , and I am still reading / learning every day . Gold recovery / refining from electronics is like an ocean, doesn’t matter how many different kind of fishes you catch , there is much more you never seen and don’t know about ! In couple days I will get the smb and precipitate the gold I will post it here , but I am still trying to find out what would be the best way to deal with this sludge which I believe it’s tungsten.it definitely have a lot of gold trapped in there . I would appreciate any advise .

Thank you

Phil

The crushed ceramics you see in the picture is about 30lb left over from roughly 300lb I didn’t pulverize them because I got side tracked with family . So Yes this is how they were before I pulverize them .

Thank you

Rcsrcs said:

I think most of the gold from those Ceramic cpus are trapped in what looks like tungsten precipitation, little drops on Stannous chloride is positive also it’s pretty dark purple as you see in picture , I kept those cpus for 6 years I knew they had a lot of gold trapped in it ,

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I wouldn't count the gold before I have precipitated it. The stannous reaction looks a lot bluer than purple to me. Tungsten or wolfram forms tungstates that can be reduced back into a blue, less oxidized form of tungstate.

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

Göran

Rcsrcs said:

but I am still trying to find out what would be the best way to deal with this sludge which I believe it’s tungsten.it definitely have a lot of gold trapped in there . I would appreciate any advise .

Thank you

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You need a filter aid/media such as silica filter sand

:arrow: https://www.bing.com/search?q=silica+sand+filter&FORM=SBRS02

The sludge is so "ultra" fine that it is like clay which is next to impossible (if not impossible) to filter & therefore yes will trap AR (& therefore trap gold)

Because the sludge if like clay - water (or your solution) will not flow through it in order to wash out all the solution (due to the "ultra" fine nature of the sludge particle size)

Therefore you need to "increase" the particle size of what you are trying to filter

Therefore - if you mix LOTS of sand (the more the better) with the sludge the "ultra" fine particles of the sludge will be more distributed through out the larger particles of the sand allowing the water/solution to flow through the sand so that the AR can wash out

So - put sand in a bucket - put the sludge on top of the sand - pour water in the bucket - mix until the sludge is WELL mixed in with the sand

Put filter paper in bottom of your filter funnel - put a piece of fiberglass insulation (about 1 to 2 inches thick on top the filer paper --- pour the water/sand/sludge into the filter funnel --- wash water through all of that until you know longer get a positive stannous test

You are now going to have a VERY dilute solution so will likely want to evaporate back down to a more concentrated solution to (better) precipitate your gold from

Edit to add; - do NOT use regular sand - there is to much "ultra fine dirt" in it - get the "clean" filter sand

Kurt