Ceramic cpu AMD and k6

[archeonist]

Hi there,

Just wanted to share a little refining I did last week on some ceramic cpu's. There were 55 cpu's mixed AMD and k6 (the ones with the aluminium lids).
I first depopulated the cpu's by heating them on a bunsen burner.
When depopulated I smashed them each in 4 pieces and put them into a beaker, poured concentrated HCl on them and a little water. Now I ramped up the heat and started adding nitric in little increments. I prefere the exhausting method rather than neutralizing using urea at the end. When I noticed the bubbling and fizzing of the solution stopped, I added again nitric untill no more of these obsevations were noticeable.
I let the whole solution cool down and added it to an iced beaker with a few drops of sulphuric acid.
The solution was nou ready for filtering. And after that I put in smb and I finally could see my lovely gold appearing at the bottom of the beaker!
Next week I will clean, melt and weigh the gold. Pictures I will place later.

 

[archeonist]

....

 

[archeonist]

....

 

[archeonist]

...

 

[Anonymous]

Nice one Archeonist.

Funnily enough I've got 50 of these in HCl to take off the MLCC and the random stuff as we speak.

Look forwards to your results.

Jon

 

[danieldavies]

there should be 2 grams of gold in that lot.
good luck

 

[Anonymous]

Possibly....... 8)

 

[archeonist]

there should be 2 grams of gold in that lot.
good luck

Yes Daniel, I know ( I mean, I hope ). I calculated 0,035 grams per cpu times 55 so I almost should have a yield of about 2 grams .

 

[archeonist]

Nice one Archeonist.

Funnily enough I've got 50 of these in HCl to take off the MLCC and the random stuff as we speak.

Look forwards to your results.

Jon

Hi Jon,

I choose to melt off all the capacitators and stuff rather than soaking in HCl. Do you use the same HCl for the nitric step?

 

[Anonymous]

I store it and use it for more stripping, it strips the solder off so when I use fresh HCl in the AR I have less contaminants to work with.

 

[archeonist]

It was my intention too to soak in HCl, but because I don't do this on a daily basis it would cost me less HCl.
Melting off all capacitators and stuff, was easy and safe for me because I work in a professional fume hood.
I hope to post the yield results next week.

 

[Anonymous]

I understand you. In the UK the HCl is so cheap that it's easy to use it in quantity and as you said if you don't do it regularly then there's no point having it lying around waiting for the next batch.

I try to keep digestions from AMD chips like these separate from other types of older ceramics because the pins contain metals that the older ceramic pins didn't.

 

[patnor1011]

Jon, where do one buy HCl and what is the price for it? Will the same apply for NI? I may go for a drive to NI as what I pay in republic is way too much for way too weak acid.

 

[Anonymous]

I scour eBay Pat. There's always someone with a deal on. You can usually pick it up for around £25 delivered for 25 litres. As you know 25 litres goes a long way.

 

[gold4mike]

Pat,

Here in the US I buy it at our local swimming pool supply store for about $7.00 per gallon. Do you have a similar option?

 

[patnor1011]

Nope, small city and local weather does not warrant building and use of pools. :lol:
I do use concrete cleaner but here concentration vareis from 10 to 20% strong. Good for AP but I like to have clean lab stuff for AR.

 

[archeonist]

Well, finally I could weigh my gold...

 

[archeonist]

Well, there we are.... went through the whole process of recovering and refining, guess what... I'm out of mapp gas!!
I still wanted to see yellow gold so i tried melting using two Bunsen burners :mrgreen: ....
The flame of such a burner reaches nearly a 1000 degrees (celcius) and a little bit over, but I was supprised to see that I could actually melt the gold. The result is a big nugget, but tomorrow I'll try again using the right burner. If I can make a nice button I'm able to say a bit more about the purity of the gold. I will post the result later.

 

[Barren Realms 007]

I don't want to sound discouraging but your powder looks dirty. Hope I'm wrong.

Good job though.

 

[archeonist]

I don't want to sound discouraging but your powder looks dirty. Hope I'm wrong.

Good job though.

No you don't, if I look at the picture I would say that also. The color in the picture is a bit different than in reality, but I am confinced that it could be more pure, I didn't make a second drop.

The nugget weighs 2,22 grams and that is far more than I expected, but maybe the unexpected weight is due to some impurities. But even then I am very happy with this result!

But we'll see what the melt of this nugget will bring tomorrow. Let's hope it will be a shiny button with a nice pipe, and hopfully not a buttun with a cracked icy surface and no pipe at all :roll: