Commercial processing PCBs

[kjavanb123]

All,

After consulting with Vans chemistry in Singapore, also searching the internet, I found full line of printed circuit board recycling systems, made in China, after contacting them, they offered me the following procedure to recycle the boards,

1. Tin removal furnace
2. Electronic components dismatnling machine
Following to their PCBs recycling machines, where output is mesh 40 non ferrous and ferrous plus any remaining plastics. Now with that powdered output of non ferrous, and ferrous, what path should we go? Dissolution into concentrated sulfuric acid, to remove tin, nickle, lead, then dissolve the rest in AR? Following to the gold bug systems, 4 of them to percipitate copper, gold, palladium and silver.



Regards,
Kevin

 

[patnor1011]

All,

After consulting with Vans chemistry in Singapore, also searching the internet, I found full line of printed circuit board recycling systems, made in China, after contacting them, they offered me the following procedure to recycle the boards,

1. Tin removal furnace
2. Electronic components dismatnling machine
Following to their PCBs recycling machines, where output is mesh 40 non ferrous and ferrous plus any remaining plastics. Now with that powdered output of non ferrous, and ferrous, what path should we go? Dissolution into concentrated sulfuric acid, to remove tin, nickle, lead, then dissolve the rest in AR? Following to the gold bug systems, 4 of them to percipitate copper, gold, palladium and silver.



Regards,
Kevin

Really?

Furnace path. Then there is few possibilities:
Boliden path or
Umicore path or
few more path

There is no chance you will be ever profitable as all you can think about is "dissolution" - it really is disappointing to see that even after all your adventures you still refuse to learn what should be obvious to you. Perhaps it is your way of learning. You simply must try to get to the point of "hey, they told me that its not gonna work". How many threads are you going to put up till you finally understand that what you suggest or better say what you dream about is nonsense?

Is it really that hard to understand or admit that one simply cant process obsolete electronics economically using acids and "dissolution"??? Besides, this was covered here so many times and general consensus here is that it is "not feasible" to put it mildly. Actually it is bordering with stupidity, who in his clear mind is going to deal with insane amounts of hazardous waste solutions? Well perhaps you do have this covered with your "contacts" and we should not bother ourselves you do it somewhere in Middle East so why not... It is more and more looking that you become victim of some failed business idea, which was cleverly dumped on you - they were really clever they even made you pay for that. You are the only one who still do not see that.

Research electrolytic refining and if I may, can I suggest that you make one thread with all your future questions as I can see many more coming. It will help you to have all your problems addressed under one roof and it will help also others to not stumble on many topics which were addressed and answered many times before.
If I can suggest it could be named "How not to process printed circuit boards"


PS. Commercial processing PCBs was covered zillion of times, it is nowhere near of what you propose and plan to do. Do your homework and educate yourself.
I have posted video here from slightly bigger operation like you stumbled upon. It was covering their operation from A to Z and that person who own that place made a lot of money. Enough for couple of lifetimes, and he did not spent a dime on acid. Link is here somewhere, it was downloaded couple of times by members.

 

[kjavanb123]

Hi there,

I thought you wouldn't want to reply to my messages anymore? I have searched and read a lot of post related to commercial recovery of PCBs and contacted a lot of manufactores that built part of equipments, also read few proposal, with some numbers and costs analysis, if have shared them with the forum in my other posts, only one person responded to that threat a positive respond.
I went beyond this forum and met with the guy who founded and ran a commercial scale refinery in Singapore with his name and pictures known to the industry, and he also provided the proposal plan to do the job for 3 tons a month which he talked using manual labor to collect all the components that have gold, silver, copper, and palladium, which seem to be limited number on a typical motherboard, then process them according to if they are plated or non plated, with all fume hood scrubber, and waste treatment equipments.
I do not believe there is one and only way to commercially recover and refiner precious metals from e waste, in enclosed document or even checking out the italimpianti site where they have a detailed scope on different technology used to process e waste, pyro and hydro methods.
Locally there are a lot of boards being traded and collected from the region that will be shipped to Eu for processing, I just can not accept that with enough capital, and consultant why it can't happen?

I am not trying to be Umicore, I am simply stating there are smaller buisness which do the same thing as them and still make profit througout the world.

Regards,
Kevin

 

[alexxx]

Hi there,

I thought you wouldn't want to reply to my messages anymore? I have searched and read a lot of post related to commercial recovery of PCBs and contacted a lot of manufactores that built part of equipments, also read few proposal, with some numbers and costs analysis, if have shared them with the forum in my other posts, only one person responded to that threat a positive respond.
I went beyond this forum and met with the guy who founded and ran a commercial scale refinery in Singapore with his name and pictures known to the industry, and he also provided the proposal plan to do the job for 3 tons a month which he talked using manual labor to collect all the components that have gold, silver, copper, and palladium, which seem to be limited number on a typical motherboard, then process them according to if they are plated or non plated, with all fume hood scrubber, and waste treatment equipments.
I do not believe there is one and only way to commercially recover and refiner precious metals from e waste, in enclosed document or even checking out the italimpianti site where they have a detailed scope on different technology used to process e waste, pyro and hydro methods.
Locally there are a lot of boards being traded and collected from the region that will be shipped to Eu for processing, I just can not accept that with enough capital, and consultant why it can't happen?

I am not trying to be Umicore, I am simply stating there are smaller buisness which do the same thing as them and still make profit througout the world.

Regards,
Kevin

If you believe you can do it, go for it. Search & learn as much as you can.
I believe there is room for smaller players.
Especially if you have a scalable model where you can process 1 to 5 tons of material very fast and get back your money quickly, or pay a rev share to the people giving you material. (as they want their money as fast as possible)
Offering your services to people not able to collect 20 tons for processing with the big boys might be very lucrative if all the steps are mastered.

The path you are engaging yourself into will be very difficult and you might lose a lot of money, if not all your money.
But it can be achieved.

On a side note, my opinion on the computer recycling business is very simple.
Each dollar, yen or euro invested into getting free material (website, publicity, traffic acquisition, phone calls, printed flyers, seo, reps on the road, etc..) will earn you way more money after dismantling and selling the parts & scrap compared to the same dollar invested into material acquisition for brokering or refining.
When you buy material you have a huge risk associated with commodity fluctuations. You just need a few bad deals to burn your bankroll. + the margins are very small.
Instead of trying to boost your margin by refining try to boost it by having free stuff... Instead of making a few more %, you will be able to double up or triple up...
my2cents...

good luck with your project

Alex

 

[kjavanb123]

Alexx,

Thanks for your words of encouragement, I haven't done anything yet, so far reading and researching, also testing on lab scale, and taking this recycling plant, I have the financial backing that would cover all the running costs for it.

I have contacted this company in China, using their machines, I can feed in 100kg of PCBs per hour it would remove the tin solders, dismantle the components, then shred the e components along with the depopulated boards, separate the metals from plastics. Then I was thinking to create Dore ball from the separated metal section, assay sell to copper refinery,

I searched forum for "Dore" and found 19 pages, read all of them, there was one interesting post about producing Dore bar from gold plated pins by a member, but sadly it ended up with other members discussing a reply to this post and how the posting should be done completely unrelated to the topic, which is really sad.

Then maybe process the fine board plastics that may contain traces of copper, to recover copper in AP.

Thanks for your advise though,
Kevin