boards harnesses ect help

[madscientist]

Ok so I've been reading hokes. Sadly nothing in there on circuit boards an harnesses. I can process the gold i pick freely clean by either reverse electroplating. thanks for the help on that goldansilverpro. But boards an harnesses are kinda stumping me on clean an easy way. I've seen loads of videos and text documents. But it all looks so messy. But they break up the boards and drop them in AR. Is this the only way. Is there any way to reverse electroplate the gold out other than c
Connecting it threw a circuit. I know i am missing something. I am worried that just AR will mess it up horribly.

 

[Smack]

Ya, I'm having trouble understanding you too. What's the question?

 

[Geo]

putting whole circuit boards in AR is a mistake. remove the ends from the cables and break them open. the pins have to be pulled by hand. the ends can be pyrolized and crushed and the pins separated and then stripped in a reverse plating cell.circuit boards have to be depopulated and the gold bearing material from them processed. without doing this, the troublesome metals such as tin and copper will cause too many problems to be successful.

 

[butcher]

madscientist,

We do not recommend using aqua regia on any material except for almost pure gold, to refine it as pure as possible.

You really do not normally need to use aqua regia with gold from electronics, it is not as easy to use aqua regia as reading about it makes it sound, gold from electronic material is normally fine enough to dissolve in hydrochloric acid and bleach, which is much easier to deal with, but here again you want to remove the base metals from the gold before putting gold into solution.

When recovering gold from electronics there can be several methods, electro-winning in an electrolytic cell is not one of them, although industrially copper is refined this way, and the gold in the copper as an impurity is recovered using this method, the copper anodes are usually already fairly pure copper greater than 85% or more pure copper before being refined electrically to an almost pure copper in these electrolytic cells.

The first step you need to learn to be able to recover gold from electronics is to learn where the values are, how to separate the material from the bulk of the electronic circuit board material, how to prepare the material, like cutting gold plated fingers from memory boards, or removing heat sinks from CPU and so on.

Before moving on to the next steps of separating the base metals from the valuable metals you will need to learn the dangers involved, and how to protect yourself and other around you, how to deal with toxic wastes you will generate, how to process the different types of materials, which process works best for what type of material, how to separate the base metals from the values without just creating one big mess loosing all of the values you worked so hard to get and prepare up to this point.

You will need to learn what supplies are needed and how to find them.

You need to read and understand Hokes book and then study the forum for details of processing electronic scrap.

At this point from the questions you are asking you are a long way from understanding what you need, begin with Hoke's book, and her getting acquainted experiments, collect your scrap materials, and study the forum, I suggest begin learning on memory fingers, these are much simpler than most of the other materials, as you are dealing with a very thin material of mostly gold plating and pure copper (some nickel), and if you prepare the fingers properly you will not have the problems involved with solder or lead.

Spend time reading Hoke’s book and the forum, gathering and preparing your scrap, doing small scale experiments on the processes you learn, to get an understanding before you know it you will be asking questions with an understanding of what you are talking about, we also will be able to understand the question’s that you are asking, and be able to help you better, and you will be melting pure gold buttons.

The forum is a great place for a mad scientist to learn, welcome to the forum.

 

[madscientist]

Im allergic to bleach i cant use it. I get a rash an the fumes alone will cause my lungs to hemorrhage. I've read about the process you lay out. I've also read about how they incinerate the boards to recover metals but that's highly toxic.

But i have done refining from escrap but I've been saving my board's to last I've used sand bath to melt solder an remove toe components. That i found here on forums. Further i have a single process refining silver gold platinum palladium rhodium in that order that i follow.

But with boards that have been stripped as much as i can strip them is what i am now left with and i need a good solution because. I have about 1.5 tons of boards.

So far i have 96.2 oz gold 347.7 oz silver and 12.5 oz platinum i started this with a massive amount of scrap. Me an my business partner have been at this for about three months now.

But i have to find a clean method as the toxic fumes from burning could kille with all saftey precautions taken. Due to mild to fatal chemical allergies bleach is a big no no..but i will keep looking thank u all very much

 

[butcher]

This is just a few of my thoughts on this subject.

The circuit after removing components would mostly contain copper, and solder, why not sell them, as trying to recover and refine the copper may cost more than what the metals are worth if doing this on a small scale, melting to form copper metal would create toxic fumes unless done with afterburners and bag filters.

An alternative Idea would be to grind the circuit boards in a shredder, using copper II chloride leach to recover copper in solution lead and silver chloride as powders would mix with the fiberglass, lead chloride is soluble in boiling hot water and could be removed and cooled back to precipitate lead, silver chloride could be dissolved in ammonia solution and then HCl used to precipitate silver chloride from solution.
The copper II chloride solution at some point you would want to retrieve the copper, and it would be nice to be able to generate your own HCL to regenerate the copper leaching process, (a portion of the copper II chloride solution would be reused to continue process), the bulk of the copper leach it may be possible to recover the copper in an cell and plating it from solution using a graphite anode, but you would have to be able to handle chlorine gas generated at the anode, this gas could be bubbled into water to form HCl for the process, but it would also form HClO hypochlorous acid would decompose in sunlight form HCl and oxygen or after chlorine gassed off leaving HCl, much would depend on conditions and temperatures as to what byproducts would form, or chlorine gas could be bubbled into a solution of sodium hydroxide to form sodium chloride and sodium hypochlorite NaClO (bleach), but here again you are dealing with chlorine gas or bleach, and not only would this be hard to control it could be dangerous, and expensive, also the electricity to run the cells may cost more than you would get for the copper.

Another possibility would be to replace copper from the copper II chloride solution with iron, but now unless you have a market for the iron chloride solution you would generate a lot of waste to deal with and you would need to supply your copper II chloride leach with new HCl to regenerate it to keep dissolving copper, again expensive.

Another option is sulfuric acid to dissolve copper, but here the lead and silver would pretty much be left in the fiberglass pulp, the copper sulfate could be lowered in copper content using electrolysis and solution returned to leach more copper.

All of these methods I believe would cost you more than the copper was worth in electricity, equipment, handling toxic gases and waste, I really do not think you would profit from this.

Sell to the boards and let the copper refiners pay you, and then they can melt them with scrap copper to make copper anodes and refine the copper, they are set up to do this.

It sounds as though you have made good profit from gold silver and platinum, sell the remaining circuit board to a copper dealer and just use that for coffee money, and sit back and enjoy your nice hot cup of coffee instead of losing money trying to do all of that work.

 

[Pantherlikher]

Im allergic to bleach i cant use it. I get a rash an the fumes alone will cause my lungs to hemorrhage. I've read about the process you lay out. I've also read about how they incinerate the boards to recover metals but that's highly toxic.

But i have done refining from escrap but I've been saving my board's to last I've used sand bath to melt solder an remove toe components. That i found here on forums. Further i have a single process refining silver gold platinum palladium rhodium in that order that i follow.

But with boards that have been stripped as much as i can strip them is what i am now left with and i need a good solution because. I have about 1.5 tons of boards.

So far i have 96.2 oz gold 347.7 oz silver and 12.5 oz platinum i started this with a massive amount of scrap. Me an my business partner have been at this for about three months now.

But i have to find a clean method as the toxic fumes from burning could kille with all saftey precautions taken. Due to mild to fatal chemical allergies bleach is a big no no..but i will keep looking thank u all very much

You've been here and doing this for 3 months? or just mass production for 3 months?... Seems odd to me but more power to you if you can do all that and still be alive with all the waste generated and you being allergic.

 

[madscientist]

A great many saftey precautions are taken to ensure me not dieing. But already had a trip to hospital due to fumes from nitric acid. Had it covered an under a venting hood and i was only wearing a disposable filter mask with my smock but the gas got me. So now i have a closed venting hood with a gas mask full face with filters rated for it. As for wastw i have a large shop i work in. So i have means to neautrilize an dispose of all the waste.

But this site is amazing i am sure with more reading an a few more days ill have my answer.

 

[etack]

Im allergic to bleach i cant use it. I get a rash an the fumes alone will cause my lungs to hemorrhage. I've read about the process you lay out. I've also read about how they incinerate the boards to recover metals but that's highly toxic.

But i have done refining from escrap but I've been saving my board's to last I've used sand bath to melt solder an remove toe components. That i found here on forums. Further i have a single process refining silver gold platinum palladium rhodium in that order that i follow.

But with boards that have been stripped as much as i can strip them is what i am now left with and i need a good solution because. I have about 1.5 tons of boards.

So far i have 96.2 oz gold 347.7 oz silver and 12.5 oz platinum i started this with a massive amount of scrap. Me an my business partner have been at this for about three months now.

But i have to find a clean method as the toxic fumes from burning could kille with all saftey precautions taken. Due to mild to fatal chemical allergies bleach is a big no no..but i will keep looking thank u all very much

leeland I think that you numbers are off .22% of Au for 3000# of boards seems way high And I use TOz are you still counting you pins as solid gold? and you wire as solid silver?(this is more believable) you need an assay to help you understand that pins are plated not solid.

What is the single process that you have?

Cl gas is a staple to refining PMs so I hope you be safe.


Eric

 

[madscientist]

Im allergic to bleach i cant use it. I get a rash an the fumes alone will cause my lungs to hemorrhage. I've read about the process you lay out. I've also read about how they incinerate the boards to recover metals but that's highly toxic.

But i have done refining from escrap but I've been saving my board's to last I've used sand bath to melt solder an remove toe components. That i found here on forums. Further i have a single process refining silver gold platinum palladium rhodium in that order that i follow.

But with boards that have been stripped as much as i can strip them is what i am now left with and i need a good solution because. I have about 1.5 tons of boards.

So far i have 96.2 oz gold 347.7 oz silver and 12.5 oz platinum i started this with a massive amount of scrap. Me an my business partner have been at this for about three months now.

But i have to find a clean method as the toxic fumes from burning could kille with all saftey precautions taken. Due to mild to fatal chemical allergies bleach is a big no no..but i will keep looking thank u all very much

leeland I think that you numbers are off .22% of Au for 3000# of boards seems way high And I use TOz are you still counting you pins as solid gold? and you wire as solid silver?(this is more believable) you need an assay to help you understand that pins are plated not solid.

What is the single process that you have?

Cl gas is a staple to refining PMs so I hope you be safe.


Eric

Oh no since my last post on possible motherload ive gotten my hands on at least ten tons of e scrap. I have processed everything down to the boards. The sand bath to remove components and incineration step made that so easy.
But no im not counting them as solid gold. Cool thing they threw out old microscopes massive ones from a lab and i used that to see the plating thickness.

But my single process is as follows quick run down as i am on phone texting all this.

Silver first with heated diluted nitric depends on scrap and if i had to mix gold and silver together then proceed. After solution filtered move to silver stock and process remaining gold. Plat. Palladium rhodium. So ar gold add a few drops sulfuric to remove pb an then percipitate gold out. Then i filter off clean for plat palladium rhodium stock. I re concentratut diluted stock and proceed with either platinum or any other metals if stanuious chloride shows me there enough to work with or i test small ammount with liquid ammonium chloride to see if good crystal formation happens. But sometimes i have to stop an wait. Sorry for text issues my phone is lagging really bad