Determination of SMBS addition into the Aqua regia solution

[4metals]

This link https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/consolidation-of-loss-gold-thread.31119/
Is to a thread that was started and then deleted by a refiner using an Emak system tumbler plant. When he finally convinced his partners to share information to get help we were able to recreate what he deleted and continue on to help him. I believe the system he has is what you have or similar, is this true?

While this thread may not help you because you are not running karat scrap, it is an example of how helpful this forum can be for those who participate fully.

 

[Chemlab]

e mak makes many different machines and each have a specific purpose. Do you have a tumbler system? The tumbler plant is made specifically for hi grade karat gold refining and not e-scrap. E mak also has systems for e-scrap processing which is largely smelting and electrolytic copper recovery. Which specific equipment do you have in your shop now?

WE HAVE RRM25 MACHINE FROM EMAK, THIS IS BASED ON HYDRO METALLURGY BASED, USING AQUA REGIA, BOTH HCL AND NITRIC ACID TANKS ATTACHED, 4 WET COLUMN SCRUBBERS AND 3 SETTLEMENT TANKS, THIS IS OUR SYSTEM USING.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

I'm guessing your Cap Lock got stuck on. Please try to avoid that. It's very hard on my eyes.

Dave

 

[4metals]

So you have one of these? This is the digestion vessel working. I assume you refine a good amount of karat or doré gold? Actually I hope you do because that is what this system is made to process.

If you want to process e-scrap this is not the way to go.

 

[4metals]

I am familiar with these systems and I have worked with them. They are primarily designed so you can tilt and empty the contents of the tumbler into the filter system seen at the end of the video. If I had known this video could be used for this purpose at the time I would have videoed the emptying of the cylinder as well. With karat gold or doré gold the insolubles pour out easily and can be rinsed into the filter.

I believe the RRM 25 is designed to process 25 kg of gold alloy. That translates into about 100 liters of aqua regia capacity. If you were to fill the tumbler with ram processors and IC chips the volume of insoluble parts after digestion will be quite large in volume and if you were to use standard 3:1 aqua regia you would have used way too much nitric to do the job. And you will likely have digested enough base metals to force some digested gold out of solution to be mixed in with the insoluble portion. This is why aqua regia is not used for this process. In addition, to allow the chemistry to contact all of the gold, the parts are typically granulated before processing to expose as much of the precious content as possible.

If it were me, this is a perfect option for smelting and electrolytic copper cells. In fact that is exactly what Emak should have told you because they sell equipment for that process as well.

There is a possibility you could use the tumbler function for either Hydrochloric Acid and strong peroxide to dissolve the gold and filter the solution and process it for the gold in your cementation tank but that process may be better advised by members using the chemistry I just mentioned to dissolve exposed Gold on e-scrap. But your equipment is overkill for that process.

You can consider cyanide stripping the granulated parts and recovering the Gold with zinc and eventually cleaning up the gold by refining it in your Emak machine, but it will take a lot of cyanide stripping to fill a machine with a 25 kg capacity!

I am at a loss to figure out why the system you have was recommended for processing ram and IC chips.

 

[Chemlab]

I am familiar with these systems and I have worked with them. They are primarily designed so you can tilt and empty the contents of the tumbler into the filter system seen at the end of the video. If I had known this video could be used for this purpose at the time I would have videoed the emptying of the cylinder as well. With karat gold or doré gold the insolubles pour out easily and can be rinsed into the filter.

I believe the RRM 25 is designed to process 25 kg of gold alloy. That translates into about 100 liters of aqua regia capacity. If you were to fill the tumbler with ram processors and IC chips the volume of insoluble parts after digestion will be quite large in volume and if you were to use standard 3:1 aqua regia you would have used way too much nitric to do the job. And you will likely have digested enough base metals to force some digested gold out of solution to be mixed in with the insoluble portion. This is why aqua regia is not used for this process. In addition, to allow the chemistry to contact all of the gold, the parts are typically granulated before processing to expose as much of the precious content as possible.

If it were me, this is a perfect option for smelting and electrolytic copper cells. In fact that is exactly what Emak should have told you because they sell equipment for that process as well.

There is a possibility you could use the tumbler function for either Hydrochloric Acid and strong peroxide to dissolve the gold and filter the solution and process it for the gold in your cementation tank but that process may be better advised by members using the chemistry I just mentioned to dissolve exposed Gold on e-scrap. But your equipment is overkill for that process.

You can consider cyanide stripping the granulated parts and recovering the Gold with zinc and eventually cleaning up the gold by refining it in your Emak machine, but it will take a lot of cyanide stripping to fill a machine with a 25 kg capacity!

I am at a loss to figure out why the system you have was recommended for processing ram and IC chips.

If it were me, this is a perfect option for smelting and electrolytic copper cells. In fact that is exactly what Emak should have told you because they sell equipment for that process as well.----- can you elaborate this, how we can use this emak RRM25 for copper?

 

[Chemlab]

If it were me, this is a perfect option for smelting and electrolytic copper cells. In fact that is exactly what Emak should have told you because they sell equipment for that process as well.----- can you elaborate this?

Actually, we are not buying this RRM 25 from EMAK, we have taken this machine from our partners, Now our material is mainly RAM and Processors, So we need to extract gold, silver, palladium out of this, That is why I put my enquiry here.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Actually, we are not buying this RRM 25 from EMAK, we have taken this machine from our partners, Now our material is mainly RAM and Processors, So we need to extract gold, silver, palladium out of this, That is why I put my enquiry here.

The way to go is to smelt and then an electrolytic cell.
This is a bit involved since it means shredding the boards fine and selecting a proper flux prior to smelting.

 

[4metals]

can you elaborate this, how we can use this emak RRM25 for copper?

You cannot, just like you cannot use a car to plow a cornfield, the equipment was not made for that purpose.

we have taken this machine from our partners

For your sake I hope you didn't have to pay for it. Unless you want to establish contacts for karat gold or doré from mines I am afraid the RRM25 is of little use to you.

 

[Chemlab]

You cannot, just like you cannot use a car to plow a cornfield, the equipment was not made for that purpose.

For your sake I hope you didn't have to pay for it. Unless you want to establish contacts for karat gold or doré from mines I am afraid the RRM25 is of little use to you.

A known contact mentioned that the Emak RRM25 machine can be used for processing e-waste materials containing IC chips and BGA chips. The process involves the following steps:

1. Incineration: The materials are incinerated at a temperature of 500°C to remove non-metallic components.
2. Powder Formation: The incinerated materials are then ground into a fine powder using a ball mill.
3. Ash Removal: The ash is separated to isolate the metallic components.
4. Molten Metal Formation: The recovered metals are melted to form a molten state.
5. Granulation: The molten metals are poured into cold water to create granules.
6. Base Metal Removal: The granules are treated with nitric acid (nitric leaching) to dissolve base metals like copper, nickel, and zinc.
7. Gold Recovery: The remaining material is subjected to aqua regia treatment to dissolve gold, which can then be recovered through precipitation.

This process ensures the efficient recovery of precious metals from chips, leveraging the capabilities of the Emak RRM25 machine.

 

[Chemlab]

You cannot, just like you cannot use a car to plow a cornfield, the equipment was not made for that purpose.

For your sake I hope you didn't have to pay for it. Unless you want to establish contacts for karat gold or doré from mines I am afraid the RRM25 is of little use to you.

May I know which machine and methods can be used in a better way to recover precious metals out of RAM, PROCESSORS, PCB BOARDS in e-waste.

 

[Yggdrasil]

A known contact mentioned that the Emak RRM25 machine can be used for processing e-waste materials containing IC chips and BGA chips. The process involves the following steps:

1. Incineration: The materials are incinerated at a temperature of 500°C to remove non-metallic components.
2. Powder Formation: The incinerated materials are then ground into a fine powder using a ball mill.
3. Ash Removal: The ash is separated to isolate the metallic components.
4. Molten Metal Formation: The recovered metals are melted to form a molten state.
5. Granulation: The molten metals are poured into cold water to create granules.
6. Base Metal Removal: The granules are treated with nitric acid (nitric leaching) to dissolve base metals like copper, nickel, and zinc.
7. Gold Recovery: The remaining material is subjected to aqua regia treatment to dissolve gold, which can then be recovered through precipitation.

This process ensures the efficient recovery of precious metals from chips, leveraging the capabilities of the Emak RRM25 machine.

This is what we do without the machine.
So why buy a expensive machine if you are going to do all these steps anyway?
Edit to add.
There might be issues I do not see as I have never processed large scale.

 

[Chemlab]

This is what we do without the machine.
So why buy a expensive machine if you are going to do all these steps anyway?

Toxic fumes, we need to control it through wet scrubbers, then only Indian govt will approve our site. Also for bulk and safety productions, we are buying this machine.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Toxic fumes, we need to control it through wet scrubbers, then only Indian govt will approve our site. Also for bulk and safety productions, we are buying this machine.

Are the scrubbers part of the machine?

 

[Chemlab]

Are the scrubbers part of the machine?

Yes, scrubbers attached into this

 

[Yggdrasil]

Yes, scrubbers attached into this

Of course but are they a part of the machine or do they need to be bought and installed separately?

 

[4metals]

1. Incineration: The materials are incinerated at a temperature of 500°C to remove non-metallic components.
2. Powder Formation: The incinerated materials are then ground into a fine powder using a ball mill.
3. Ash Removal: The ash is separated to isolate the metallic components.
4. Molten Metal Formation: The recovered metals are melted to form a molten state.
5. Granulation: The molten metals are poured into cold water to create granules.
6. Base Metal Removal: The granules are treated with nitric acid (nitric leaching) to dissolve base metals like copper, nickel, and zinc.
7. Gold Recovery: The remaining material is subjected to aqua regia treatment to dissolve gold, which can then be recovered through precipitation.

Well your friend was right, of all 7 steps listed only numbers 6&7 can be processed in the equipment you have. And those steps are not really an efficient use of the equipment.

The first 5 steps can be accomplished with equipment made by both Italimpianti or by Emak. They will involve a similar process. First is pyrolysis followed by milling and mechanical separation and then a smelting process. They will not granulate at this point, they will cast copper anodes which are processed in electrolytic copper cells to produce pure copper and as a by product they collect all of the precious values in the insoluble slimes.

The slimes could be processed in the equipment but not efficiently. First the capacity of the equipment exceeds what you will be feeding it at that point and the equipment you have is really just for gold, the Silver will have to be treated separately and the platinum group metals also need treatment that is not compatible with the equipment you have.

Later today I will explain something about fume scrubbing both for incineration and for chemical fumes. You actually have chemical fume scrubber capabilities but not anything for the hot particulate fume you will see in the first steps.

 

[4metals]

Toxic fumes, we need to control it through wet scrubbers, then only Indian govt will approve our site. Also for bulk and safety productions, we are buying this machine.

Fume scrubbing, whether it is for a pyrolysis / incineration process or a chemical refining operation is all predicated on thru-put of material. In order to properly size what you need to proceed you need to provide more information, when this thread started out you said;

Our e-waste raw materials are RAM, processors, and IC chips.

Does this mean you get this scrap from circuit boards and someone else processes the boards or do you intend to process entire circuit boards and the RAM, processors, and IC chips or are you limiting yourself to refining components off of circuit boards. The reason this matters is your first step will be, as your list of 7 steps indicates, is incineration. The quantity of what you incinerate determines the equipment you need and the size. You need to consider also that while you now may only be refining chips, in the future that may change. This equipment is not inexpensive so you want to get it right.

I think your best path forward is to determine exactly what and how much material you wish to process before you go requesting quotes on equipment. For example if you are processing whole circuit boards you can expect to get 300 pounds of copper out of a ton of boards. If you burn 1 ton a day (this is small actually) you need a copper cell that will produce 300 pounds of copper a day to keep up. So the cell needs to be sized accordingly.

The actual precious metal recovery after the smelting and copper refining cells will be handled in a hood working in relatively small vessels rarely exceeding 22 liters per batch. This equipment is simply a hood and the reaction vessels to refine the slimes. Your existing fume scrubber can likely be re-purposed to handle the fumes from those reactions.

Think about what quantities you need to process now and in the future and if you like, come back here and ask questions. If you are better informed about what you are looking to do and the quantities you will be better equipped to talk to the equipment salesmen and tell them what you want and let them propose equipment. We can, if you need us to, evaluate their suggestions and help guide you on the proper path to process what you want to refine in an efficient manner to meet your goals.