My business gets in a lot of circuit boards, and a little over a year ago I heard about e-waste recovery for gold. After a lot of reading I figured out quickly that the recovery processes were probably better left to those with a better understanding of the chemicals, and reactions that take place. However, we only have one buyer in my area for boards, and after watching a pallet in the corner of my building fill up with boards, and recieving a $12 check when it was all said and done made me rethink.
I became a hobbyist and started depopulating boards in my spare time, hoarding the gold plated material I could get. Until one afternoon I decided to try, processing gold fingers didn't seem to hard. For the last 8 months I have been running gold fingers through AP, filtering, but going no further with process. Just saving the gold foil filled filters in a jar in my workshop, but today, I managed to even mess that up when my first filtration of fingers was going too slowly. I grabbed for a metal, (copper based i'm guessing)? sieve instead of the usual glass filter I use, and ended up with a brown/copperish sludge instead of the usual packed filter of gold foils. Im guessing the AP, and metal from the sieve had something to do with this result?
I became a hobbyist and started depopulating boards in my spare time, hoarding the gold plated material I could get. Until one afternoon I decided to try, processing gold fingers didn't seem to hard. For the last 8 months I have been running gold fingers through AP, filtering, but going no further with process. Just saving the gold foil filled filters in a jar in my workshop, but today, I managed to even mess that up when my first filtration of fingers was going too slowly. I grabbed for a metal, (copper based i'm guessing)? sieve instead of the usual glass filter I use, and ended up with a brown/copperish sludge instead of the usual packed filter of gold foils. Im guessing the AP, and metal from the sieve had something to do with this result?
