2nd trail for processing fingers in AP

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ahmadbayoumi

ahmadbayoumi

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 21, 2013
Messages
196
Location
Egypt
Hello ALL,

Seems that things get better from one trail to another.

For my 2nd experiment for processing RAMs, I started with 2ks of normal PC RAMs.

Then, ended up with about 140g of closely trimmed fingers and 570 IC chips.

1st, I started to process the 140g of fingers using AP.

tired this time to be patient as much as I can and to avoid all my mistakes from the previous experiment.

I followed the steps exactly as it should be and got a quite good gold powder precipitated in the bottom of my flask.

I washed 2 times with plain water but I faced an issue that there was always some gold powder floating on the water surface and I was unable to decant the water.

So I decided to boil the flask with the water (150 ml) and gold.

But I believe it was a bad idea as once the water started to boil, the gold powder stared to boil also and after evaporating all water the remaining gold powder was attached to flak and got stuck and I was unable to collect it.

So, I decided to dissolve again using AR.

I did the AR and again tried to be patient as much as I can and added NHO3 in very small increments.

The workaround worked quite good and I got again Aucl2 ready to gold precipitating.

I used a little bit of sulfamic acid to make sure no free NHO3 in my solution.

The gold powder precipitated this time was quite shiny and looks really like gold (not brown powder) and looks like very fine gold particles (mash) making ride stones.

This time I was able to decant almost all water and the then evaporated the remaining water by putting the flask in low heat.

Then left the flask to coll and collected the gold and it was 0.5g of shinny gold.

My question now, why in the after re-dissolving the gold I got this shiny gold mash rather than brown gold powder ?

My 2nd question is 0.5g of gold is good yield out of 140g of trimmed finger ?

Thanks for your usual support.

gold.jpg
 
Hi, I've read about the gold flakes instead of dark gold powder precipitate few times in forums but with my reading I never found an answer. To me it looks like it happens when there is an excess of sulfuric acid.

About the yield, from 2Kg of RAM modules I would expected 1.5gr from fingers only but it all depends what manufacturers, year was made, size etc. So you are either ok or lost ~0.2 somewhere.

Considering that losses will be the same (as quantity) in small and big batches I'm considering to recover as much I can and refine only once thus greatly lowering the percentage of the losses.
 
First off I think you are talking about a beaker not a flask (I don't see a taper to the vessel it looks to be straight walled)

then you say you got brown powder from the AP process - I have never used the AP process but as I understand it that is a recovery process & does not dissolve the gold so you should have got foils - not powder - as I understand the AP process to be a process to recover foils (I use nitric in for my foil recovery process as I get it for less the $3 a gallon)

So --- are you taking about using HCl/Cl to dissolve the gold the first time ?

I ask because you mention "re-dissolving gold 2nd time" ?

Kurt
 
Hello ALL,

Seems I was not clear enough in my post.

1- I started with 2k of PC RAM sticks.
2- Cut the fingers and depopulated the IC chips to end up with 140g fingers and 570g of chips.
3- Took the finger for processing using the CuCl2 etching solution (from old batch) + 1000 ml HCL + Air bubbler (samuel-a's method)
4- After 4 days, all the gold foils were striped out of the fingers
5- Dissolved the gold foils using the HCL/CL
6- Heated up the solution to remove any excess CL
7- Used SMB to precipitate the gold
8- Washed the precipitate gold with water
9- There was some very fine gold powder particles that couldn't settle at the bottom of the beaker
10- Due to the above, I was unable to decant much of the water so I though I can boil the beaker to evaporate the water and the gold powder should left out at the bottom.
11- Seems that this was not a good idea as the water evaporated but the gold powder stuck at the beaker and I was unable to collect it.
12- Though again, that I can re-dissolve this powder using NHo3 + HCL and then I can try to precipitate it again and avoid what happened in step 10
13- After re-dissolving the gold powder, I got the yellow AuCL2
14- I used sulfamic acid to remove any excess NHO3 (seems I used too much which could be the source of sulfuric acid as mentioned by MarcoP)
15- Used the SMB again to re-precipitate gold which gave the above shiny gold flakes

That was the whole thing.

Now if there is excess of sulfuric acid, How can I remove it ?

Also, you mentioned MarcoP, that you would expect 1.5g from the fingers only .. Did you mean it really .. 1.5g out of 140g foils !!

I have seen in the forum many yields for gold foils but not as much as you said

So would you PLS confirm and if so would you PLS tell which method you are using to achieve these yields.
 
Forgot to mention that I got 0.5 g of gold flakes out f the whole 140g of fingers

Also, sorry for writing that I used a flask .. it was a beaker as you stated kurtak :) :lol:
 
sounds like you are on the right track. In short, you did a second refining of your gold, which is common practice, to achieve a higher purity. You should look around the forum to figure out how and why this works. I would also read up on Harold's washing proceedures and the theory behind why the proceedure is useful and why you should incorperate it into your process.

As a general rule, the purer your gold is the lighter the powder will be. also, a more dilute the Auric Chloride solution will tend to form smaller 'crystals' and be 'sparkly' when it precipitates. So a combination of both these factors is why your gold looks they way it does on the second time.

as far as quantity of gold you recovered. In my experiments, I have found an average yield of 1.8g of gold per pound of gold fingers (with a range of 1.6g - 2.1g).

So figuring the standard to metric conversions: 1.8g [Au] /453g [fingers] = ~0.004 or 0.4wt%
using your yield numbers: 0.5g [Au] / 140g [fingers] = ~0.00357 or 0.357 wt%

you are measuring such a small amount that scale tolerances could be effecting your measurment, but i would be happy with that yield.
 
Sorry, I've got it all wrong. In my head 1Kg were about 100 RAM sticks but looking at my own weights 100 ram sticks are about 2Kg so I doubled the results.
54 double sided RAMs weights 1136gr.
76 single side RAMs weights 1281gr.
With a return of 750gr of TSOP packages.

However the eScrap Refiner's Gold Mining Guide Rev. 0.7 states 0.6-0.9gr Au from 100 sticks and it seems excluding TSOP from the count.
 
Thanks mls26cwru and MarcoP for the info.

But seems there a big variations between different yields.

According to mls26cwru ; I'm very close to the average yields.

However as per MarcoP; seems I'm far beyond the good results.

So which results are the real one ?!
 
ahmadbayoumi said:
So which results are the real one ?!
Click to expand...
The only results that are real are the ones you get.

I know it's nice to compare your results with those of others to know if you've lost anything along the way, but the best way to be sure you're not leaving any behind is to test. Yield results are all over the place because there is so much variation in the starting material, as well as variations in the proficiency of different refiners.

Dave
 
I would not go by the notion of how many "grams of gold per # of sticks or RAM." There are far more variables in the weight of the ram stick (ie: chip count, chip weight, chip density, size or board, type of ram, heat sinks, etc). About the only general rule of thumb I can attest to is that each stick of RAM will give about 1 gram of cleanly cut fingers. Other than that, the yield numbers are all over the place.

The numbers are much more consistant when you talk about just fingers. After a number of refinings of fingers I found the "grams per weight of fingers" ratio fall within a much more narrow range. Ultimatly you will have to figure out which weights and ratios for specific material work best for you... and you will need to find that out by trial and error and good record keeping :)
 
...and I would make sure that your AP is saturated with copper so any dissolved gold would precipitate as dark powder the same powder stuck in your filter if you filtered your foils. I'm just making sure you don't lose values as I did in past.
Learned the lessons and I'm not filtering or changing vessel anyone, at least were not due.
 
Thanks a lot dear .. I'm really enjoying these discussions 8)

Definitely, the real yields will be those I get.

But for me I just need to know the typical yields range, this is regardless of the process and/or the refiner proficiency .

This would help me understand if I'm near to this typical yields or I'm far beyond.

I'm asking for the typical range and I'm saying range because I know that there are many variations in the RAMs themselves (chip count, chip weight, chip density, size or board, type of ram, heat sinks, etc)
 
mls26cwru said:
sounds like you are on the right track. In short, you did a second refining of your gold, which is common practice, to achieve a higher purity. You should look around the forum to figure out how and why this works. I would also read up on Harold's washing proceedures and the theory behind why the proceedure is useful and why you should incorperate it into your process.

As a general rule, the purer your gold is the lighter the powder will be. also, a more dilute the Auric Chloride solution will tend to form smaller 'crystals' and be 'sparkly' when it precipitates. So a combination of both these factors is why your gold looks they way it does on the second time.
Click to expand...

Correct :!: especially the underlined in the above quote :!:

Kurt
 
It is also quite common to use a different chemical to precipitate your gold on the second refining process. Using the same precipitant will usually give the same results, but that's not what you want. You want different results. You want the gold to be purer and that means less stuff (other than gold) precipitating out of your solution. There are quite a few different precipitants that you can use. Each has its own pros and cons.

Having said that, I believe it was Lasersteve who says he only ever uses SMB and gets quite good results. It's just something to consider.

Also, having a little sulfuric acid in your mix is not necessarily a bad thing. It will help get rid of either lead or tin (don't remember which) and its use is well documented here on the forum. Sounds like you are making progress. Keep up with reading Hoke and the forum.
 
ahmadbayoumi said:
Hello ALL,

Seems I was not clear enough in my post.

1- I started with 2k of PC RAM sticks.
2- Cut the fingers and depopulated the IC chips to end up with 140g fingers and 570g of chips.
3- Took the finger for processing using the CuCl2 etching solution (from old batch) + 1000 ml HCL + Air bubbler (samuel-a's method)
4- After 4 days, all the gold foils were striped out of the fingers
5- Dissolved the gold foils using the HCL/CL
6- Heated up the solution to remove any excess CL
7- Used SMB to precipitate the gold
8- Washed the precipitate gold with water
9- There was some very fine gold powder particles that couldn't settle at the bottom of the beaker
10- Due to the above, I was unable to decant much of the water so I though I can boil the beaker to evaporate the water and the gold powder should left out at the bottom.
11- Seems that this was not a good idea as the water evaporated but the gold powder stuck at the beaker and I was unable to collect it.
12- Though again, that I can re-dissolve this powder using NHo3 + HCL and then I can try to precipitate it again and avoid what happened in step 10
13- After re-dissolving the gold powder, I got the yellow AuCL2
14- I used sulfamic acid to remove any excess NHO3 (seems I used too much which could be the source of sulfuric acid as mentioned by MarcoP)
15- Used the SMB again to re-precipitate gold which gave the above shiny gold flakes

That was the whole thing.

Now if there is excess of sulfuric acid, How can I remove it ?

Also, you mentioned MarcoP, that you would expect 1.5g from the fingers only .. Did you mean it really .. 1.5g out of 140g foils !!

I have seen in the forum many yields for gold foils but not as much as you said

So would you PLS confirm and if so would you PLS tell which method you are using to achieve these yields.
Click to expand...

Dear Ahmad
Normally the output of gold from 1 kg of RAM (finger + chips) is between .7 -1.1 g
 
Thanks a lot dears .. seems I'm on the right track till the moment :)

Will process the chips this week and will share the results with you 8) 8)
 
I started processing the the IC chips removed out from the 2Ks RAM.
The total amount of chips was 570g.

I started the process by incineration. However due to lack of some resources, I was unable to perform a complete incineration but almost 70-75% of the chips were white/grey.

Anyway, I'll re-incinerate those didn't well incinerate today or tomorrow.

Now, I'm concerned about washing the resulting ashes.

I know that this step is essential to remove all plastic and non metallic staff.

But, this would be very time consuming process and would require more that 10 washings/pourings, so I'm thinking about adding some table salt (salinated water)(instead of the dish soup) to the washing water to speed up the process.

I don't know the effectiveness of this approach but I saw it somewhere here in the forum as a suggestion.

I know that there are some alternatives for this step but all are not available currently. So the only way is water washing so I need to find a workaround to speedup this step.

Also, I read here that I would be better not to drain the water away but I should use a larger bucket, and I think that it may require a bathtub to hold all the washing water which is definitely not practical and not logic.

So, I'm thinking about a time effective and efficient way for using the water washing process here and need your help.
 
I would have waited to gather at least 1Kg of ram chips because the low return (about 0.01-0.04%) you will get from half kilo.
As I can see your only choice is to use salt water or a gold pan.

I already have all it occurs to make a blue bowl, cheap water pump used on boats, a sausage funnel, a common funnel, the right size and shape bowl (hard to find), hose and connections but all I need now is the material and a good way to incinerate. I have already about 2Kg of low and middle yield chips and I'm waiting for some good yield material to pile up before proceed.

If you believe you are going to incinerate again, I'd suggest to make your self a blue bowl otherwise separate with soap and or salt, a good boil helps too and if the wires aren't broken you could skim the ash while boiling as long the container (beaker ecc) it's tall enough.

P.S.: In the last few days I was able to steal about 0.03gr (estimate, will weight tomorrow) off ram sticks depopulated with dilute HCl by processing the sludge left over at the bottom. As I believed, some soldering contact were gold plated and the plating will alloy with the solder upon soldering. HCl will break it apart freeing some gold.
Next time I will make sure to process gold plated sticks separately and save the sludge with other low grade material.
 

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