Aqua Regia and Pulverized Ceramic IC Chips

[kernels]

As per my answer above, you identify ceramic chips visually and by weight.

Similar to how you would identify a ceramic plant pot vs. a plastic one.

But, ceramic chips are few and far between, you likely don't even have one in your stash.

 

[Shark]

I think this is not needed if you have done some searching, but a very simple method is to heat one with a propane torch for just a few seconds. Ceramic won't smoke or burn (if clean). Epoxy chips will smoke and may even ignite in flame within a few seconds. Once you find one that is ceramic 99.9% of future ceramics will stand out pretty good for you by sight.

I hope you know not to do this inside as the smell is awful and lingers for some time. Not to mention how toxic it can be.

 

[goldenhaha]

Ok,

After reading all of the posts, it seems that the most important thing for this extraction to be successful is to separate the chips according to what they are, and not process them all at once. Also, it seems that there may be some extra steps necessary to remove some base metals before crushing/pulverizing the chips. Using copper instead of any other chemical or compound to precipitate the gold in AR is no problem, I am going to sort through the chips and take photos of them once sorted. BTW, how to I identify if a chip is ceramic or if it is Polymer? That would be helpful. Also, should I be focused on a particular type of chip, since one poster mentioned that most BGAs contain only copper. I'm going after the gold here, so which chip should type should I focus on?

Thanks Again All

BGA chips have copper for the base metal and gold bonding wires. Sorry that I didn't make that clear changed it in the other post.

 

[patnor1011]

Read thread in my signature line. It is a long one but you will find everything you need to process what you have there on that picture. What you need is to reduce material to concentrate and process only that.

 

[Barren Realms 007]

The answers you are looking for will be answered in the threads that have been suggested for you to read. For the most part. Your best answers will come with experience in working and sorting the different chips and paying attention to the post's by well known members. This all comes with the amount of reading you do and the patience you have to slow down and absorb the information you read and then apply it to the material you have. There are some other good threads that you will find in your search as well that use other options. A lot is going to depend on what you have to work with in the way of equipment.

I know that is not going to make any sense right now. Buy there will come a time in the not too distant future that you will have an AH HA moment and it will hit you while you are either separating your material or during processing it.

Forget about the hot plate and stirrer, it is not going to help you much with this type of material.

Read and work on separating your material and testing as has been suggested. After a while you will be able to tell the difference in the different types when you pick them up because of their weight and feel.

This all come with experience and patience.

 

[Dzimmy89]

Here's a question for everyone:

After watching the youtube video that is posted in this thread without incineration, the kiwi in the video removes all of the metals using a magnetic device.
Why remove all of the magnetic metals from the pulverized chips? Is it possible that some gold may be attached to the magnetic metals and that you could inadvertently be removing some gold in the process? Isn't it possible to keep all of the material and use the chemical process later on to dissolve and then precipitate the gold? Wouldn't your yield be higher this way? Or are there problems that I am missing here?

Thanks all!

 

[UncleBenBen]

It's not just possible but probable that a small amount of values will follow the ferrous and copper based pins from chips. The real question, is it worth it to try and recover those tiny bits of values as part of the process?

On the hobbyist level, I like the idea of concentrating the values over time as has been suggested here on the forum. That's by adding iron based pins to a bucket of salt water, and using copper based pins to cement the stock pot.

 

[nickvc]

The truth is all chemical processing of PMs will result in some loses along the way the trick is to minimise those initial loses and recover what's lost later by careful harvesting of your various wastes all of which is covered extensively on the forum.
The smaller amount of values you process the larger percentage you will lose initially so learn the best processes and methods before starting to help minimise them.