e-Waste Scrap Recycling Startup seeking guidance

[blitzmak]

Hello everyone,

I am part of a startup that is venturing into the world of precious metal recovery from electronic waste. We understand that this is a complex and delicate process, and we are keen on doing it right.

We are currently seeking advice and guidance from experienced professionals in this field. If you have experience in precious metal recovery, particularly from electronic components, we would love to hear from you.

Our main areas of concern at the moment are safety protocols and efficient extraction methods in regards to our financial feasibility study with a certain batch we have processed (images attached).

We appreciate any and all advice. Please feel free to share your insights and kindly point out any information that is missing from my end.

Thanks for your time and looking forward to learning from and sharing with the community.

Best,
Extrash Recycle LLP

 

[patnor1011]

How did you prepare that material? Was it melted?

 

[andu]

Im quite surprised you dropped with material ready to be processed, im sorts of curious how you got it from the pcbs. Simplest method would be getting rid of base metals either with nitric or hcl. Hcl along a air bubbler would be cheapest with the so called AP method.

 

[Yggdrasil]

To me this material just seem ground up, and relatively coarse.
I might be wrong though.
Anyway you will need many tons of this on regular basis to have a business running.

 

[blitzmak]

How did you prepare that material? Was it melted?

This was processed through a PCB recycling machine, where it had gone through shredding, grinding and a few other separation processes. We are still workington fine tuning the machine for a efficient segregation.

 

[blitzmak]

To me this material just seem ground up, and relatively coarse.
I might be wrong though.
Anyway you will need many tons of this on regular basis to have a business running.

You're right. We ran it through a PCB recycling machine, the output is much more than I have posted. We've got steel, aluminium, iron and plastics in various sizes.

As for the supply, I have arranged for a minimum of 1Ton a day supply to start with in the scenario where we do have a heavy duty plant set up.

 

[blitzmak]

Im quite surprised you dropped with material ready to be processed, im sorts of curious how you got it from the pcbs. Simplest method would be getting rid of base metals either with nitric or hcl. Hcl along a air bubbler would be cheapest with the so called AP method.

Ran it though a shredder and hammer mill post which it was process multiple times for segregation. I was wondering if you could elaborate a bit more on the chemical processes as I am keen on understanding my precious metal recovery from the product I have for better understanding of financial feasibility and better pricing on these PCBs. I would appreciate any assistance.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Ran it though a shredder and hammer mill post which it was process multiple times for segregation. I was wondering if you could elaborate a bit more on the chemical processes as I am keen on understanding my precious metal recovery from the product I have for better understanding of financial feasibility and better pricing on these PCBs. I would appreciate any assistance.

What Andu is talking about is more in the hobby level , not suitable for industrial processes.
Do you have a buyer for the low to mid level PCBs?
Are you selling the concentrate or smelting it to Dore bars and sell those?

 

[blitzmak]

What Andu is talking about is more in the hobby level , not suitable for industrial processes.
Do you have a buyer for the low to mid level PCBs?
Are you selling the concentrate or smelting it to Dore bars and sell those?

Our goal at this moment is smelting it into Dore bars

 

[4metals]

Smelting is the best option. May be a bit of a smoking mess until the circuit board material burns off. But all of the base metals can be dealt with using an oxygen sparge process in the melt.

Magnetic separation will help you get the iron out before smelting and a density separation may effectively help separate the low density plastics.

What percentage of the mass is copper?

 

[andu]

Smelting actually sounds like the best option yes, if you taking this option then this is what you need to watch https://www.youtube.com/@mbmmllc
It all tends to depend on the cost of reactants you have around there and the amount you are to process.

 

[4metals]

https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/smelting.25592/

Read about it here before you go off watching video’s.