E Scrap straight to AR ,my biggest mistake.

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So I assume there is nothing in my sollution and gold is in solids?
correct - nothing in the solution

Edit to add; - at least as I am seeing --- however - for now just set that solution aside AND DO NOTHING we MAY come back to it

In other words SLOW DOWN until things can be discussed more - YOUR gold is not going to go anywhere but if you keep moving forward without FIRST completely discussing this you more likely then not just going to a bigger & Bigger & BIGGER MESS !!!

In other words STOP until WE ask more questions & WE get more answers back from you !!!

Do you understand !!!

Kurt
 
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So,as you gentlemen said in. Solids is the most possible to contain my gold.Question is, do I dissolve them in nitric acid ,decant and boil of couple of times in water and try refine again. Or boil of in water, decant and dissolve in muriatic. And start refining again?

As I said in my last post STOP - do NOTHING until we more completely discuss this

You ether want help - or NOT

Kurt
 
First: stop it all, take a step back, breathe and clear your mind of any and everything you think you know.

Per the bold print - right now that was the best advice you could give him

BUT - then you went on with nine other things to do anyway - much of which is NOT good advice

In other words you tell him to STOP - but then tell him things to do anyway - that are not the best advice --- because we don't yet have enough info from him
Second: filter and make sure to have a nice separation of solids and liquids.

I believe he has already done that
Third: cook the liquid to a syrup-like consistency.

Why in the world would you have him do that when he has had a negative stannous test

& besides - he was already given that advice - so he already did that - & still has a negative stannous test

Why are you advising him to do it again ???
Fourth: dilute just a bit with HCL and add to a resting container with clean pure copper pieces, wait a couple of weeks.
Same answer I just posted above - no reason to do that when the stannous test is negative

Besides that - cementing with copper does not take a couple weeks - IF (the BIG IF) there is gold in solution - it will cement out in a couple hours
Fifth: wash the solids clean with water, make sure all solution is gone.
Sixth: cook in HCl (and HCl only) until the last boil is transparently clean.
Seventh: wash with water several times.

That is the gold washing process --- but FIRST we need to find the gold
Eighth: it is time for HNO3 like 3:1 with water, here you will have to observe, make sure you go until the solution is clean again

If you do that after doing the above washes you are likely to dissolve SOME gold because you are likely to have SOME TRACES of HCl after doing the above
Ninth: wash, wash, wash, wash in hot water.
Tenth: process in AR

Again - we first need to find his gold --- until then - he should do NOTHING

In other words - all that above advice you gave him is only going to cause him to do things - before we solve the problems - which in turn is going to cause him to make an even bigger mess

Kurt
 
Following up on our advice to STOP, lets start providing us with some pictures of the mess you've made and we can go from there.

I'm interested in the "solids" and the "etc" you've dissolved. we need to know before we can help.

And please be complete in you description! If you leave out an E-waste item because you're embarrassed to tell us for example, we might not be able help you solve it.

Throw all solutions together in the stockpot and let that take care of it.

Study: Dealing with Waste

There are no pm's in there if the SC test was negative, as Kurt explained.
Set the solids aside and study.
If you have a question or you think you understand something, ask us here in this thread BEFORE you attempt anything with chemicals.
Seriously: STOP!

The different steps you took and the questions you've asked indicate you do not understand what you are doing.
so again: STOP! Take Kurts advice.
We will guide you in the right direction, but keep holding our hands while we guide you and don't try to start walking on your own yet!
 
First of all - we need to back up to the beginning

You said ---------

So,my first try to recover gold scrap.About 2kg in total,ram sticks,boards ,pins and etc.

Per the bold print - so you put not just 2 kg of RAM sticks in AR - but a combination of RAM - other boards - pins & etc. that all totaled 2 kg ?

Is that right ?

If so - besides the RAM - what were the other boards - what kind of pins - fully plated pins or partly plated pins &/or pins with no plating - & just what else does etc. include

In other words - about how much was RAM - about how much & what kind of "other" boards - about how much pins & what kind of pins & were the pins separated from their plastic housing or still in the plastic housing - & what is etc.

Even though you have already put this all in acid (AR) - it would be good to see pictures of ALL OF THIS that is left over as it is now

Please post pictures

Kurt
 
But to give some real advise: STOP! Study.

And:
https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/when-in-doubt-cement-it-out.30236/
To comment Aetyr's advice:
Give some background info why certain steps need to be followed in your opinion.
We try to avoid the 'do this, do that' process tutorials and instead make people understand what's going on. Knowledge is power. Youtube is lethal.
Just repeating your advice: evaporate and do this, do that does not help anyone in any way. I for one don't understand why that would be necessary in this particular case.

It's am attitude which sustains the Urea misconception e.g.
Please consider contributing differently.

Martijn.
I got a 'poor man's aqua regia kit' many years ago, like 25! It also told people to use urea. Funny thing is, if you're doing gold jewelry, it works for that. Because the solution is already so high in gold, and the calculations are done to keep the reaction as close mole-to-mole of reagents and metal, there's little nitric left afterward. Therefore, the urea brings the solution's pH up a notch and the SMB precipitation works perfectly.

This is NOT the case with ore and e-waste, where the reagents are being used massively in excess and there are huge amounts of other metals. Urea is useless in those reactions, unless you just need to raise the pH a little.
 
I disagree. The difference is not in the types of source metal you're refining but the amount of nitric or nitrates used. I don't see a difference between e-waste and jewelry. There is a difference in operator maybe, not the process if carried out properly.
Experienced e-waste refiners also know how to separate metals without wasting nitric.

In 'your' case (you think) it 'works' because of the fact you calculate and can guesstimate a little better how much precious metals have to be dissolved so there is little to no free nitric left in solution and the urea only has to eliminate NO gas in solution. Which has no function in my opinion.
Evaporating a little bit would do the same thing.
The urea does not react differenlty because the source of scrap metal is different.
So i still advice to stop urinating in your gold juice.
A stamp to mark it's yours will do fine. ;)
 
First of all - we need to back up to the beginning

You said ---------



Per the bold print - so you put not just 2 kg of RAM sticks in AR - but a combination of RAM - other boards - pins & etc. that all totaled 2 kg ?

Is that right ?

If so - besides the RAM - what were the other boards - what kind of pins - fully plated pins or partly plated pins &/or pins with no plating - & just what else does etc. include

In other words - about how much was RAM - about how much & what kind of "other" boards - about how much pins & what kind of pins & were the pins separated from their plastic housing or still in the plastic housing - & what is etc.

Even though you have already put this all in acid (AR) - it would be good to see pictures of ALL OF THIS that is left over as it is now

Please post pictures

Kurt
Sadly I threw it out already(leftovers of board and what was left) I did removed as much non plated metal as possible,solder points etc. It was about 300g ram pins.1.3kg SIM like boards, about 400 g of pins in plastic housings and lastly copper plates 15mmx15mmx2mm fully plated with gold and by the looks very thick plated.No base metals vere left after dissolving.
 
Sadly I threw it out already(leftovers of board and what was left) I did removed as much non plated metal as possible,solder points etc. It was about 300g ram pins.1.3kg SIM like boards, about 400 g of pins in plastic housings and lastly copper plates 15mmx15mmx2mm fully plated with gold and by the looks very thick plated.No base metals vere left after dissolving.
Plenty inside the boards, and most likely, that is where your Gold was.😱
 
Especially pins in plastic take longer to dissolve and will cement your values on the base metal inside the plastic leaving it stuck in there.
The lesson learned is worth more than the gold lost.
Never throw a bunch of different e-waste together. Different approach for each type, some you can combine together in e.g. AP.
Save your nitric for refining.
 
Especially pins in plastic take longer to dissolve and will cement your values on the base metal inside the plastic leaving it stuck in there.
The lesson learned is worth more than the gold lost.
Never throw a bunch of different e-waste together. Different approach for each type, some you can combine together in e.g. AP.
Save your nitric for refining.
Yep, I watched and listened to SO MANY vids from dozens of scrappers for 8 months before I even began, learning about each component, how they've changed over the years in composition, how to sort even the same types based on materials used in them year-to-year (which is CRITICAL for capacitors, they have so many types! Modern large capacitors are pretty much garbage. MLCCs after the year 2000 are useful only for people who are skilled at nickel recovery, which is a consideration with nickel now passing $12/lb, roughly 2.5 times the current price of copper.

Chips (especially the long IC chips with many leads from older boards), I found out, often have a higher amount of silver in them than any other PM... so the general 'wash them with HCl' to remove base metals can be a very bad idea, as that will create silver chloride that will be almost impossible to recover from the mess of chip dust. They also frequently have palladium-plated tips on the inside portions where the nano-wires attach... which themselves are unpredictable: gold, palladium, platinum. So you must assume ALL of them are present in a random bag of mixed IC chips.

I'll be trying a batch of crushed chips with mild sulfuric acid first, then more concentrated sulfuric (once I have my SO2 recovery apparatus setup! I plan to get as much life out of my reagents as physics and chemistry allows!) Any silver and palladium dissolving there can then be cemented out on copper and refined (some other metals will cement out, but in general the Ag and Pd will be much more concentrated after this cementing and easier to purify). Gold and platinum, conversely, will not be touched. So those metals will be left in the chip mush for traditional gold and platinum recovery methods, with little other metal remaining.

The HIGHLY toxic solution full of many many transition metals from the sulfuric steps will be cemented with iron to recover as much copper as possible, then evaporated, and roasted into oxide powder over modest heat (driving off the sulfate mainly as SO2, which can be enhanced by mixing with carbon with an oxygen feed or mixing in some sodium carbonate). Again, the gas capture apparatus will grab the fumes.

Ideally, I'd have preferred to use nitric acid, since nitrates decompose so nicely. But the sheer amount of goo generated from using nitrate on e-waste (tin, aluminum, bismuth, and a few other metals and metalloids form insoluble sludge in nitric) makes it implausible.
 
Hello!
First off, apologies I misspelled Butcher tremendously wrong, don't mean to be disrespectful even a bit.
Sorry I was not clear: you have two batches to treat separately: the solids and the solution. Don't mix them together anymore, from now on you treat them independently and never forget your experiment journal. Good luck!!!!
 
Especially pins in plastic take longer to dissolve and will cement your values on the base metal inside the plastic leaving it stuck in there.
The lesson learned is worth more than the gold lost.
Never throw a bunch of different e-waste together. Different approach for each type, some you can combine together in e.g. AP.
Save your nitric for refining.
So,to clarify I will explain my steps as now.First of all,I do not take ireversible steps.So,to begin with.I filtered solids from solution.I boiled of 5L of solution with added 100ml(30%) sulfuric acid to about 700-800ml. When cooled it crystallized to slushy(photos added).Solids remain as is(photos added).I did not dried them fully as Hoke's book said because they maintain Tin sludge.( Small amount).Now, SC tests.My SC was made with 60ml 30% HCl and 13g Sn. I did made sample of 5ml SC and diluted with 5ml 30% HCl just for reference to original SC.(BTW SC is 2 days old) When taken from "syrup".(photos added)Original-I do get instant white spot,then edges start to become black and bubble a bit(yes) and after couple of minutes very small amount of by my eyes purple leach from edges(very little).Diluted- instant brown and becomes white(dies). When doing spoon test.Original-milk emerges,becomes black with quite bubbly reaction and precipitates a lot of crystals. Diluted- almost no reaction.

So,how do I treat my solids?
I assume it's worth cementing out my solution after filtering out the crystals.
Can my SC be bad if it does give false positive?
What is that reaction with SC and syrup?
To clarify I do not have gold solution to test SC.
 

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No,I checked every peace.Only fiber glass and empty plastic.Trust me on this.
It is in the traces inside the pcb, cemented on the copper and anywhere else there is a bit of base metal. It's a dark brownish powder a d do not look like gold. So it was there until you threw it away.
 
It is in the traces inside the pcb, cemented on the copper and anywhere else there is a bit of base metal. It's a dark brownish powder a d do not look like gold. So it was there until you threw it away.
I understand that and repeat myself.Pcbs were SIM like.I left no peace that had any metal on it.Only ones with pure fiberglass.The ones with any kind on material on were left to fully dissolve.Plastics with pins were checked to see hole thru to determine no metal were left.All the copper peaces undissolved were shaken and washed until I saw pure copper colour.Even tough I failed completely ,my goal is to learn and recover whatever I can.I does hurt because I spent almost 2 years collecting that and it didn't cost me anything accept time.
 
I understand that and repeat myself.Pcbs were SIM like.I left no peace that had any metal on it.Only ones with pure fiberglass.The ones with any kind on material on were left to fully dissolve.Plastics with pins were checked to see hole thru to determine no metal were left.All the copper peaces undissolved were shaken and washed until I saw pure copper colour.Even tough I failed completely ,my goal is to learn and recover whatever I can.I does hurt because I spent almost 2 years collecting that and it didn't cost me anything accept time.
So you split them open and inspected the copper traces inside the fiberglass?

The sim like PCBs did they have chips inside/on them, if so there might be gold in there too.

You do not need to see the metal for the cementing to happen. As long as it is wetted by the solution.
 
I understand that and repeat myself.Pcbs were SIM like.I left no peace that had any metal on it.Only ones with pure fiberglass.The ones with any kind on material on were left to fully dissolve.Plastics with pins were checked to see hole thru to determine no metal were left.All the copper peaces undissolved were shaken and washed until I saw pure copper colour.Even tough I failed completely ,my goal is to learn and recover whatever I can.I does hurt because I spent almost 2 years collecting that and it didn't cost me anything accept time.
If all you're looking for is to recover gold, then the best option is to remove base metal with sulfuric acid. It won't touch gold at all. The foils will be left as solids. Then you wash them and the plastic/ceramics (since some foils will stick to them with several changes of hot distilled water, and then dissolve the gold using whatever method you can work with.

The HCl-bleach method works very well with gold foils, and you just add a tiny amount of bleach to the HCl at a time (no more than 2-3 mls if you don't have a huge mass of foils) and swirl, until the foils are dissolved. Then it's filtering the junk out of the solution, and washing (save the first wash too, it has a relatively high amount of gold in it), heat outside in sun to remove excess chlorine, and then recover gold with SMB. Always let the soln sit overnight to settle, and bring it to a light boil if it refuses to settle.

I did that method with a small test batch of old (1980's) fingers and pins, and got a full gram of gold from 100g starting material. It was nice dense light-brown powder.

I have about 6g total now of powder, and will be starting on a 1/2 pound batch soon of the highest-grade pins I've got and a little over 1lb of fingers.

Going to try to save nickel in addition to copper, since nickel prices are EXPLODING ($12/lb now!). But that's a complex process for later.
 
So you split them open and inspected the copper traces inside the fiberglass?

The sim like PCBs did they have chips inside/on them, if so there might be gold in there too.

You do not need to see the metal for the cementing to happen. As long as it is wetted by the solution.
Volatile information chips,single layer.Couple of transistors and gold plated contact areas.
 
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