Cell phones

[Dougplogan]

I have a 5 gallon bucket of old flip phones from the 90s. Has anyone ever tried just burning them? Basically similar processes as doing chips? I don't expect there's much gold there but there has to be a better way than just sitting around taking phones apart. One problem I see is loosing the foils from the boards when rinsing I suppose. Just a thought

 

[orvi]

That would be an ugly mess to process. I do not say that it couldn´t be done... Even whole boards alone are hard to process for amateurs, if they aren´t completely smelted and fluxed liquid. If you intend to perform it, don´t forget to remove batteries from them. Electrolytic caps will pop also, but nowhere that violent than batteries.

I strongly recommend to not do this, but if you have a good furnance capable of fluxing and melting glass... As an small experiment, why not. Incinerate first of just ashes (be careful about smoke/caps explosions), then pour it to the crucible and flux it to liquid with borax. You will need quite a temperature to make nice liquid slag. This is the only way how can I imagine to work it without dissasembly. You obtain metal ingot, which need to be pyrometallurgically refined, copper will be electrorefined and your gold will end up in the slimes.

 

[Dougplogan]

That would be an ugly mess to process. I do not say that it couldn´t be done... Even whole boards alone are hard to process for amateurs, if they aren´t completely smelted and fluxed liquid. If you intend to perform it, don´t forget to remove batteries from them. Electrolytic caps will pop also, but nowhere that violent than batteries.

I strongly recommend to not do this, but if you have a good furnance capable of fluxing and melting glass... As an small experiment, why not. Incinerate first of just ashes (be careful about smoke/caps explosions), then pour it to the crucible and flux it to liquid with borax. You will need quite a temperature to make nice liquid slag. This is the only way how can I imagine to work it without dissasembly. You obtain metal ingot, which need to be pyrometallurgically refined, copper will be electrorefined and your gold will end up in the slimes.

I wasn't necessarily talking about melting it down so much as ashing it like the ic chip process. I've done several batches of chips and have done gold plated stuff in the past with success. So I do have some experience. I wouldn't want to melt any of the metals together. It would be ashing everything. Separating all ferrous and non ferrous. Then chemical refining that I am familiar with and have gotten gold from a few different materials now

 

[orvi]

I wasn't necessarily talking about melting it down so much as ashing it like the ic chip process. I've done several batches of chips and have done gold plated stuff in the past with success. So I do have some experience. I wouldn't want to melt any of the metals together. It would be ashing everything. Separating all ferrous and non ferrous. Then chemical refining that I am familiar with and have gotten gold from a few different materials now

I meant that consider in what parts gold is present in cellphone. Some flash plating, few pins and few IC chips. Not to mention there is not that much gold in one cellphone and weight of the components with gold is tiny fraction of the bulk. That "dead mass" of no value scrap will inevitably dilute the feed, enlarging surface area of the ashes, making everything in the processing more difficult.
I don´t feel comfortable with the incineration-grinding-leaching idea in this case, but in theory, you should get something from it.