E-Waste using no chemicals - Can it be done?

[goldshark]

I have long wanted to ask you why the dore bar has this shape, and where is the top?

The smelt was poured into a cone mold. A cone mold can be circular or square shaped. The molten mix is poured into the cone mold, the higher specific gravity metals will sink to the bottom. The cone mold is turned over and tapped to remove the slag and the metal. So the wider portion of the bead (dore ) will be up.

 

[kurtak]

I have long wanted to ask you why the dore bar has this shape, and where is the top?

Are you asking me about my cone shaped dore metal --- & I am ot sure what you mean by "the top"

Kurt

 

[Yggdrasil]

I have long wanted to ask you why the dore bar has this shape, and where is the top?

Because they are poured into a cone mold.

Edit for extra characters.
My fingers really do not like phones.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Becausecthey are poured into a cone mold.

Kurt beat me to it.
The top is the wide section.

 

[anarxi]

the main vitamins at the pointy end of the carrot?

 

[Yggdrasil]

the main vitamins at the pointy end of the carrot?

It is an alloy so its more or less evenly distributed.

 

[Manji Manii]

I get ya, there is very little smoke in the process unless you are burning main boards.

But if you separate pins out and use a magnet to get the nickel MLCCs out and then turn everything into dust and drop it in your furnace, your end product should be mostly silver, gold and palladium with the silver being about equal to palladian and gold being about 20% of the end product.

 

[Manji Manii]

Though is may be a fun "small scale" experiment (as well as "somewhat" dangerous) it most certainly is NOT going to work on any production (for profit) scale !!!!!!!!!!!


This pure & utter nonsense - if not outright B.S

In the first place - 2 pounds of "depopulated waste" (scrap) will NEVER give you 2 pounds of dore (mixed) metal

That is because the VAST majority of "depopulated" waste is not metal - it is organics (like epoxies & other plastics etc.) & inorganics (such as silicon, silica, ceramics etc.)

In the second place - even if you got rid of ALL the organics & inorganics & used "your" process on nothing but the (2 pounds) metals from "depopulated waste" the PMs in that dore metal would NOT be even close to 1 pound of PMs - so NOT even close to $1,800 --- at best you will get a few grams (3 - 6 grams or if you are LUCKY maybe 7 - 8 grams PMS)

That is especially true if you are basing your process on 2 pounds of sorted material depopulated from 200 mother boards

And that is because you need about one ton (2,000 pounds) of "modern day" mother boards to get "about" 1 & a1/3 pounds of PMs (gold, silver & palladium)

From one ton of modern day mother boards you will get "about" ------

gold - 3.5 ozt = 108 gram

silver - 16 ozt = 497 grams

paladium - (plus/minus) 1 ozt = (plus/minus) 31 grams

total PMs = 636 grams minus 454 grams (a pound) = 182 grams = a bit more then 1 &1/3 pounds PMs from 1 ton mother boards

A modern day mother board weight is "about" 1 pound = (about) 2,000 mother boards per ton

Therefore 200 mother boards will only give you one tenth of what 1 ton will give you --- or only about 63.6 grams ("about" 2 ozt) of PMs (that is all PMs combined - mostly silver - some gold - very little palladium)


This also is pure & utter nonsense - if not outright B.S

You have clearly done very little - if any at all - actual smelting with a gas (propane) fired furnace

I have done a LOT of smelting over the course of about 10 years & depending on the smelt I can recover between 60 - 80 pounds dore metal with $100 propane

To put that in perspective - here is a picture of one day smelting --- 20 pounds dore metal recovered - used less then (2) 5 gallon tanks of propane (that is less then $25 at todays propane price) & that included not only the propane to run the furnace but also the propane to run the turkey frier to heat the cone mold

Besides a pic of recovered dore metal from one days smelting I am including a pic of my smelting set up

Bottom line here Minji Manii - & I don't mean to be rude here - but not all of us here are "hobby" refiners &/or you tube "hacks" --- some of us have been doing this for a long time & doing it as "for profit" living

So you can expect that those of us with years of experience - making a living (for profit) will correct such utter nonsense &/or B.S - as you have posted here - & that holds true whether it is you posting it or someone else

With that said - welcome to the forum - you have just joined the worlds very best place to learn about the recovery & refining of PMs - we in fact have some of the worlds very finest refiners here on this form - some of them are just hobby refiners with MANY years experience - others of us have years of experience owning & or running small to VERY LARGE commercial (for profit) refineries - & we come from all around the world

So we hope you will stick around for the discussions & learning

Kurt

Ok, whatever you say.

1. I have never used a gas or electric furnace, so I guess your numbers are accurate.


2. Yeah, I am a hobbyist, with 3 kilos of palladium, 19 kilos of silver, 12 kilos of gold, 20 kilos of platinum and all but platinum from about 2 tons of ewaste. I never said I was a professional, but my results are in line with multiple professional ewaste recyclers.

3. It boggles the mind how inefficient many of the processes recommended here are. For example, fingers, you strip the base metals away leaving gold foil floating around, then you dissolve it in AR, drop it and come out with EXACTLY the same weighed results. I just melt it into ingots....using AlZnO2 thermite.

Yeah, I am a hobbiest, but so are you as well as 99.99% here.

 

[Yggdrasil]

I get ya, there is very little smoke in the process unless you are burning main boards.

But if you separate pins out and use a magnet to get the nickel MLCCs out and then turn everything into dust and drop it in your furnace, your end product should be mostly silver, gold and palladium with the silver being about equal to palladian and gold being about 20% of the end product.

I do not know where you get your numbers from.
If I'm not mistaken there will be mostly Copper from the CBs and minute amounts of Gold and Silver.
And if you remove all the components there will be next to no Palladium.
Even if you have the good MLCCs Pd is just 10-15% of the Silver.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Ok, whatever you say.

1. I have never used a gas or electric furnace, so I guess your numbers are accurate.


2. Yeah, I am a hobbyist, with 3 kilos of palladium, 19 kilos of silver, 12 kilos of gold, 20 kilos of platinum and all but platinum from about 2 tons of ewaste. I never said I was a professional, but my results are in line with multiple professional ewaste recyclers.

3. It boggles the mind how inefficient many of the processes recommended here are. For example, fingers, you strip the base metals away leaving gold foil floating around, then you dissolve it in AR, drop it and come out with EXACTLY the same weighed results. I just melt it into ingots....using AlZnO2 thermite.

Yeah, I am a hobbiest, but so are you as well as 99.99% here.

If you are going to sell it it do not matter if it is 50 or 99% pure you will get payed on actual Gold content.
But most here go the extra mile to get it as pure as possible simply to show they can do it.
And then the buttons go into the safe or where ever they store their valuables.

 

[Manji Manii]

I do not know where you get your numbers from.
If I'm not mistaken there will be mostly Copper from the CBs and minute amounts of Gold and Silver.
And if you remove all the components there will be next to no Palladium.
Even if you have the good MLCCs Pd is just 10-15% of the Silver.

I do nothing with the boards, at all, I can sell them to copper buyers as is.

Yeah, I kinda was wondering why there was equal returns on silver and palladium, because I mechanically separated the two once and came up with 20% per weight palladium to 10% lead and 70% silver.

But oddly enough, when I use the chemical process my seller uses, I get their results of about 40/60. Not sure but some ceramics might contain palladium.

I also don't actually refine my returns, but I do use aluminum thermite processes to separate metals.

 

[Manji Manii]

If you are going to sell it it do not matter if it is 50 or 99% pure you will get payed on actual Gold content.
But most here go the extra mile to get it as pure as possible simply to show they can do it.
And then the buttons go into the safe or where ever they store their valuables.

Yeah, I am not selling, I guess I am hoarding, but I make money off of pure copper and most of my oxides I bought back in the 90s when all metals were cheap, but I have been working with aluminum thermite reactions since the 1980s.

However, my education is law and not much metallurgy and chemistry is taught to law students.

 

[Manji Manii]

the main vitamins at the pointy end of the carrot?

Thermite is technically Al + FeO only. Also FeO can be found in most soils by simply dragging a magnet on the ground. Stream beds will have the highest percentage of it. I would not induce this reaction indoors, or in a steel crucible. High temperature refractories only. Watch Cody'slab on Youtube, for a demonstration of what is involved.

Look up thermite videos on YouTube other than Cody's Lab, Cody is awesome, but he is very messy.

If you read the link I posted, it details one of eight types of aluminum thermites.

The ones I main use are:

Al ZnO2, this evaporates lead, zinc, tin and other light metals into the aluminum oxide waste.

Al TiO2, titanium dioxide will evaporate copper but leave behind titanium metal which wil be contaminated by the heavy metals. I really don't use this often

Al SiO2, silicon dioxide separates by density nobel metals but fused with pure silicon, I use this on microchips.

Al CO2, mixed with Si3Au2Ag5Pl1Cu7 ground into dust, carbon dioxide is used to convert silicon into aluminum silicates which evaporate into the aluminum and can separate by density

Al Fe2o2 and Fe3O2, or iron thermite, is the most common and used predominantly to produce pure steel when mixed with carbon.

Al Cu2O2, copper dioxide will leave behind pure copper, if you mix in precious metals, they will alloy eith the pure copper so you can recover the rich slime from electrolytic refining

Each of these processes is defined as aluminum thermite reactions, the key being that once the aluminum ig ignites it pulls the oxygen atomss off of the oxides molecules leaving behind Al2O2 and pure whatever material which made up the oxide.

The temperature range of this process depends on the melting point of the metal in the oxide, so, iron oxide gets up to the melting point of iron and copper oxide gets up to the melting point of copper.

In the examples of zinc, tin, sodium, carbon, silicon and lead, the reaction temperature causes an evaporation of those elements leaving behind aluminum oxide infused with those elements, however, these are the worst temperatures expressed by their reactions, with Carbon Dioxide burning at about -3° C.

 

[Manji Manii]

The smelt was poured into a cone mold. A cone mold can be circular or square shaped. The molten mix is poured into the cone mold, the higher specific gravity metals will sink to the bottom. The cone mold is turned over and tapped to remove the slag and the metal. So the wider portion of the bead (dore ) will be up.

I don't know where you read that, but it is definitely not true!
Why would manufacturers do something like that and even... HOW? Etching wires out of a gold silver alloy would be extremely hard. We usually have to inquart with silver to even be able to process such alloys.

Smartphones, just as 99.99% of all electronics, uses copper in the pcb. The only way to make circuit board with a gold-silver alloy is to screen print it. When found it is on a ceramic substrate that has been baked in an oven.

Göran

Actually, yeah, every thing that glitters gold on smart phones IS gold.

And yes, it is printed onto the board rather than etching with Iron III chloride like copper boards.

However, it is also 10 times thinner than copper and is slightly more conductive.
Still, a pitiful amount.

Take a closer look at those thin ribbon wires used I smart phones, they are the ribbon material and gold.

 

[Manji Manii]

Thermite can be made from almost any combination of a less reactive metal in oxide dust form and a more reactive metal in metallic dust form.

There are some practically explosive combinations, in fact. Gold oxide and copper dust, for instance.

Copper oxide thermite can be slowed down with dry ice mixed in.

Any non reactive metal will just melt in a thermite process.

I once tried AuO2 and oh my, it is violent and hard as heck to make.

 

[Manji Manii]

A video with Al ZnO thermite reaction.

 

[GoIdman]

Since you are equipped to deal with high temperature metal working, I would recommend taking the following steps.

1. Depopulate
2. Run a ceramic magnet through the material and pick up the nickel containing pieces.
3. Grind what is left into powder with a coffee grinder, use a espresso grinder.
4. Weigh the material and take equal amounts of zinc oxide and aluminum dust and mix it together. (Alternately, you can take the weight in aluminum foil plus the same in zinc oxide powder plus the grind and roll the foil with a strip of magnesium diagonally along the inside of the roll with the powder in the center, aluminum is flammable as foil.)
5. With a strip of magnesium ribbon as a fuse, put the mixture in a crucible and ignite the mixture using the magnesium fuse. Or light the fuse on the roll inside of a crucible, like you would use for iron smelting, not a little one ounce thing.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272884217320977#:~:text=The above-mentioned values reveal,In fact,


The aluminum will burn off at a temperature in excess of the evaporation point of zinc metal leaving behind aluminum oxide and a blob of metal at the bottom of the crucible that will be predominantly silver, gold, copper and palladium. The rest will be aluminum oxide.

Just sell it as is. Somebody will pay you a lot more money than doing anything more would cost you.

If it is a smartphone, the mainboard PCB will be a gold and silver alloy, not copper, shred tablet, phone and small electronics boards and mix them in with the thermite and burn off the cellulose in the process, but this will make the mix burn hot and smokey.

As for fingers, containing a layer of gold on nickel layered on copper, believe it or not, but you can just sell those on eBay for about what you would expect to get by going through some process to extract the gold at home without chemicals.

Hope this helps, zinc oxide is cheap and aluminum foil is even cheaper and you can spend $20 in materials to extract up to 1 kilo of ewaste alloy.

Please excuse me if i don`t understand quite what you mean...but sounds intristing enough to find out more about this process of yours.

Can you please tell me, exactly what material you use this process for.....schredded PCB?....Various mix of IC chips?....Pins,connectos,MLCC mixture?.....Ceramic IC?.....or the mixture of all materials whatsoever?...

I separate my materials on grade, if i dont sell as a whole board...so if i was to use this termite method of yours, what material is ideal to use this proces without contaminating my results with unwanted metals?

I am not a chemist, nor a metallurgist expert, that is why I ask, since you obviously have more information/experience on this topic...

Thanks..

Pete

 

[kurtak]

Yeah, I am a hobbiest, but so are you

That is quite the accusation considering you have been a member of this forum for a whooping 4 days & therefore have no real clue who I am (though you may have been lurking for awhile) - but even then you clearly have not read much of anything I have posted over the last 13 years I have been a member of this forum (4043 posts under my current user name & a few hundred more under my old user name)

So let me clue you in - I spent a couple years before finding this forum as a hobby/learning (refining/recovery) thing - so been at this for about 15 years --- & I also spent "a number" of years in Northern California involved in both hard rock mining & placer mining before getting into the refining part of this

Of that 15 years (refining/recovery - so not including the mining) I spent "about" 10 years doing this for a living - full time - I am now retired from that

I used to handle "on average" 2 - 3 tons of CBs per month & on occasion as much as 5 tons - the vast majority of "run of the mill" consumer boards I just sold off to LARGE board buyers - or - sent them in to a smelter that was only a couple hours from where I lived - BUT - I also had an actual "lab" set up for processing (recovering/refining) the VERY HIGH grade stuff I took in (pics included as an "example" of the kind of VERY HIGH grade I "processed") along with my "small smelting operation

So hardly just a hobby !!!

Yeah, I am a hobbiest, but so are you as well as 99.99% here.

Per the bold print (above quote) it may be true that the VAST majority of our something like 50,000 members are hobby refiners - BUT - we also have &/or had "a good MANY " members that own & or run from small to VERY LARGE world class refineries - you know - actual businesses !!!

Just a FEW examples ---------

Lou - he currently runs 3 VERY LARGE "world class" refineries (it may even be 4 refineries) there is no one that knows more about PGMs then Lou

4metals - he has spent his entire life setting up LARGE refineries &/or consulting for LARGE refineries "all over the world" - he is now retired from spending a life time at this

nickvc - has spent most if not all of life ether running &/or owning small/large scale refineries

GSP - spent his life owning &/or running large scale refineries - he is now passed away

Harold_V - spent his life owning his own large scale refinery

Deano - spent his life as a lead refiner for VERY LARGE mines in Australia

Jon - like me (only on a MUCH larger scale) deals (currently) mainly in CBs - he sends CBs to Mitsubishi in Japan for smelting - by the 40 ton shipping container full - like me he also has his own lab for processing the VERY HIGH grade stuff he takes in

And that is just a FEW of such members that we have &/or have had on this forum

As well - as a result of the information provided on/by this forum we have probably seen (plus/minus) 100 small to large scale refineries developed - in other words actual refining businesses started up through this forum

So I recommend (& again - not trying to be rude here) that as a new member - you take some time to learn & figure out who & what this form is really about - before you go opening you mouth talking "at" us as if we are nothing but a bunch of back yard you tube hobby hack refiners --- & speaking of hobby refiners - some of our hobby refiners are every bit as good at refining as those of us that do &/or did it for a living

Kurt