Electronic boards from cellphone and computer

[angel0o]

Hello everyone i hope you are having a good day!!
And I hope this is the right procedure to ask question about gold refining

I started recovering gold in small quantities in small containers and at the end i ended up recovering more platinum, palladium, copper, silver and small quantities of gold

Lately my friends and customers gave me a lot of phones, computer and other electronics, took them apart and removed as much iron and base metals as possible and wanted to speed up the process i started processing big quantities of boards (5kg) of mixed boards but i ended up with a goo and stuck, not knowing what to do next, luckily i recover everything by cementing and got rid of junk and kill the acids and dispose them

First question: is there another way to refine platinum without boiling?
I don't have space at this moment to set up a heater and let it run for three hours

And i would like to listen yo your advice after you read about the process
I came out with:
I take apart the whole phone or device, remove as much iron, aluminum, plastic and other junk
Big pieces of copper i set them aside
Then i break the board down to small pieces, burn it, put it in a 5 gallon bucket, add hydrochloric acid, leave it for three days, empty and refill again and leave for three days, empty container and add new hydrochloric acid and add nitric acid ass needed to resolve most of the metals (platinum wont dissolve in aquaregia at room temperature) so i set it aside, since i ended up with dirty aquaregia i cement it and removed the copper, boiling the remaining precious metals, wash and save for further refining

(Sometimes i pulverize the boards) just to experiment with the boards

I want to know if there is a way to do this process without boiling l, for the moment i cant set up a stove or heater because lack of space
I attached some pictures of the process

I need your advice please, i think i got more than i can chew, i am talking about maybe 50 kg of cleaned, pulverize boards, i think there is more palladium and platinum than gold in there, i attached some pictures of the materials i have cleaned, the bags feel heavy one of them is about 3 kg

I drop the gold with smd
The palladium with zinc
And platinum with ammonium
If you can help me with your advice i really appreciate it, thanks

 

[patnor1011]

Your process will lead to more being lost than what you actually recover.

In short your boards are not pulverized enough and while values can be recovered by smelting with collector metal a lot of them will escape in smoke when you will be burning boards.

Your process is not good.

What I would do is to depopulate boards, strip values from bare boards and sort depopulated stuff and process various types using different appropriate processes.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Hello everyone i hope you are having a good day!!
And I hope this is the right procedure to ask question about gold refining

I started recovering gold in small quantities in small containers and at the end i ended up recovering more platinum, palladium, copper, silver and small quantities of gold

Lately my friends and customers gave me a lot of phones, computer and other electronics, took them apart and removed as much iron and base metals as possible and wanted to speed up the process i started processing big quantities of boards (5kg) of mixed boards but i ended up with a goo and stuck, not knowing what to do next, luckily i recover everything by cementing and got rid of junk and kill the acids and dispose them

First question: is there another way to refine platinum without boiling?
I don't have space at this moment to set up a heater and let it run for three hours

And i would like to listen yo your advice after you read about the process
I came out with:
I take apart the whole phone or device, remove as much iron, aluminum, plastic and other junk
Big pieces of copper i set them aside
Then i break the board down to small pieces, burn it, put it in a 5 gallon bucket, add hydrochloric acid, leave it for three days, empty and refill again and leave for three days, empty container and add new hydrochloric acid and add nitric acid ass needed to resolve most of the metals (platinum wont dissolve in aquaregia at room temperature) so i set it aside, since i ended up with dirty aquaregia i cement it and removed the copper, boiling the remaining precious metals, wash and save for further refining

(Sometimes i pulverize the boards) just to experiment with the boards

I want to know if there is a way to do this process without boiling l, for the moment i cant set up a stove or heater because lack of space
I attached some pictures of the process

I need your advice please, i think i got more than i can chew, i am talking about maybe 50 kg of cleaned, pulverize boards, i think there is more palladium and platinum than gold in there, i attached some pictures of the materials i have cleaned, the bags feel heavy one of them is about 3 kg

I drop the gold with smd
The palladium with zinc
And platinum with ammonium
If you can help me with your advice i really appreciate it, thanks

There is to much wrong in your process to comment on.
First:
Modern consumer electronics have NO Platinum, little if any Pd , then some Gold and Silver.
Second:
Put all your stuff away and study the links I give you now.
When you have studied it all, Hokes book needs a minimum of three readings.
Come back with a formulated plan an we will help you adjust it.
Now Go Study!

We ask our new members to do 3 things.
1. Read C.M. Hokes book on refining jewelers scrap, it gives an easy introduction to the most important chemistry regarding refining.
It is free here on the forum: https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=19798
2. Then read the safety section of the forum: https://goldrefiningforum.com/forums/safety.47/
3. And then read about "Dealing with waste" in the forum: https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/dealing-with-waste.10539/

Suggested reading:
https://goldrefiningforum.com/forums/the-library.101/
https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/when-in-doubt-cement-it-out.30236/
https://goldrefiningforum.com/threa...le-read-this-before-you-post-about-ore.33333/


Forum rules is here.
https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/gold-refining-forum-rules.31182/

 

[galenrog]

Yggdrasil gives good advice. Please let me expand on one item. Originally written for jewelers, Refining Precious Metal Wastes, by C M Hoke, published over eighty years ago, still stands as the best primer one can read in this field.

A good bit of the safety protocols have changed for the better, as has waste management. These are covered in various sections of the Forum.

When reading Hoke, read it cover to cover. Read it again. The third time through, write down all questions and comments you may have. There will be many. Bring each of those questions here. Good people who are smarter and better that I will answer.

When you finish, go to the acquaintance experiments Hoke presents. Perform each until you have an understanding of the procedures. Write down any questions or comments and bring them here for discussion.

Time for more coffee.

 

[Shark]

I will add a bit more to Yggdrasil and galenrogs already valuable information.

For those “visual” learners, these acquaintance experiments will teach you much from a visual standpoint as well as scientifically. You can see much happen right before your eyes that you will see in future endeavors of refining that you will know by sight. These can be in many forms such as recognizing silver chloride, lead chloride, and many other forms that may help or hurt, depending on what you are trying to accomplish. Over looking the experiments can be a set back once you’re ready to actually refine your materials. It also allows more time to gather up, and recognize individual components for a larger recovery as well if the time is used wisely while preparing for the later reining. Which also brings us full circle back to the reading part, you can’t learn visually near as much if you can’t read and learn as well. Reading and visual go hand in hand, use them both wisely.

 

[kurtak]

Then i break the board down to small pieces, burn it, put it in a 5 gallon bucket, add hydrochloric acid, leave it for three days, empty and refill again and leave for three days, empty container and add new hydrochloric acid and add nitric acid ass needed to resolve most of the metals

First of all & right out the gate - if this is a "for profit" business plan you will FAIL & fail BIG TIME for a number of reasons

1) The cost in both time & chems to "wet leach" whole CBs (Circuit Boards) even if you are first shredding them & incinerating them will far exceed the values recovered from the leaching process

2) You will NEVER get all the values washed/filtered out of the garbage you are trying to leach the values from so "some" of the values will ALWAYS remain locked up in the garbage --- the garbage being the ash & fiberglass etc. etc. etc. from the shredded/incinerated boards

3) You can not just simply go from one acid leach to the next (HCl to nitric to AR) there are multiple steps needed between each acid leach including but not limited to re-incineration of the ash/fiberglass between leaches

Just as one example; - if you do not wash/filter - dry - re-incinerate between HCl & nitric you will most certainly loose much if not all of your silver

4) you are going to create HUGE amounts of TOXIC chemical waste that is them going to require even more of your time & chems to make all of that TOXIC waste safe for disposal --- all of the above in an attempt to recover a relatively small amount of PMs (Precious Metals) all of which simply CAN NOT be recovered by wet chem leaching of whole boards (even if they are shredded & incinerated)

Example; - 5 gallons HCl leach plus 10 gallons water to wash HCl leach out of the ash/fiberglass = 15 gallons chem waste

Next leach - 5 gallons nitric leach plus 10 gallons water to wash nitric leach out of ash/fiberglass = 15 gallons chem waste

Next leach - 5 gallons AR leach plus 10 gallons water to wash AR leach out of ash/fiberglass = 15 gallons chem waste

You now have 45 gallons of TOXIC chem waste that will require more of your time & more chems to make all the TOXIC waste safe for disposal

That is just an example & in reality the amount of TOXIC waste you create will be MORE then that (to do it all right)

There is VERY GOOD reason why NONE of the BIG BOYS use wet chem leaching to recover values from CBs -they ALL use a smelting process

i started processing big quantities of boards (5kg) of mixed boards

That (5kg) is NOT a big batch & in fact a VERY SMALL batch

To put it in perspective (call the 5 kg 10 pounds)

If you send 1 ton (2,000 pounds) of "mixed" CBs to an actual CB smelter they will recover between 3.5 - 5 ozt. gold (depending on the mix of board) so lets go with the high 5 ozt per ton recovery number

That means out of 10 pounds of "mixed" boards you would only recover "about" 0.7775 grams of gold - IF (the BIG IF) you recovered ALL the gold - which you will NOT do with wet chem leaching

Granted - if you leached NOTHING but 10 pounds of cell phone boards you will get "much" better recovery - BUT - the cost will most certainly exceed the recovered values with wet leaching for all the reasons explained above

There is a VERY GOOD reason why the BIG BOYS - NEVER - leach whole (shredded/incinerated) CBs but instead ALWAYS smelt them

Kurt

 

[kurtak]

but i ended up with a goo and stuck, not knowing what to do next,

My last post explains why you ended up with a bunch of "goo"

luckily i recover everything by cementing

You most certainly did NOT recover everything - as explained in my last post

In other words - just because you recovered something does not mean you recovered it all - & the FACT is with wet chem leaching you will NEVER recover it all - & what you do recover will NEVER be cost effective

Kurt

 

[Spaceships]

As the lads have said. Don't try to dissolve boards, it's a complete waste of time and energy. Separate the bits you think are full of gold (or whichever precious metal you are looking for) and process those. Pick your battles.

For context, if a board has a refined gold content of 100ppm (i.e. 100g of gold per 1000Kg/2200 lbs) then you're processing 999.9Kg of "stuff" to grab 100g. It's simply not worth your time/effort or as Kurt said the sheer volume of wasted you're going to make.

Forget faffing about with the 99.999% - find the stuff that contains the gold and treat that.

 

[Golddigger76]

Clearly acids are not very efficient products to refine gold plated boards on a large or small scale.

I have not tried cyanide leaching and certainly wouldn't try until I am more educated and have a very good understanding of not only how it works but also how to effectively recover gold and other precious metal from the solution, this is something that I plan to study when I get more time to focus on it.

My question is for you that have experience with cyanide, is it a efficient method for gold plated boards and is there any profit to be made after the purchase of the chemicals needed for using it on a small scale, maybe anything from a few lbs up to 100 lbs of plated boards ?

Also what is your experience/opinion on using cyanide for gold plated pins on smaller batches of pins ?

 

[patnor1011]

I think that AP is good choice for plated boards if you want to do them. It is slow but cheap and solution can be used for a long time and some volume of material. And when you finish, copper can be recovered too.
Mainly considering that there is very little value on boards plating I think that it does not matter how long it take while it is cheap.

 

[Shark]

I think that AP is good choice for plated boards if you want to do them. It is slow but cheap and solution can be used for a long time and some volume of material. And when you finish, copper can be recovered too.
Mainly considering that there is very little value on boards plating I think that it does not matter how long it take while it is cheap.

Very well said. As many grow into large scale they tend to forget some of the most basic processes at times. I always used AP on boards with idea in mind that it is a long term process. Even then selectively choosing what boards were to be processed. More a step in the retirement plan method many used to talk about on the forum.

 

[user 73658]

First of all & right out the gate - if this is a "for profit" business plan you will FAIL & fail BIG TIME for a number of reasons

1) The cost in both time & chems to "wet leach" whole CBs (Circuit Boards) even if you are first shredding them & incinerating them will far exceed the values recovered from the leaching process

2) You will NEVER get all the values washed/filtered out of the garbage you are trying to leach the values from so "some" of the values will ALWAYS remain locked up in the garbage --- the garbage being the ash & fiberglass etc. etc. etc. from the shredded/incinerated boards

3) You can not just simply go from one acid leach to the next (HCl to nitric to AR) there are multiple steps needed between each acid leach including but not limited to re-incineration of the ash/fiberglass between leaches

Just as one example; - if you do not wash/filter - dry - re-incinerate between HCl & nitric you will most certainly loose much if not all of your silver

4) you are going to create HUGE amounts of TOXIC chemical waste that is them going to require even more of your time & chems to make all of that TOXIC waste safe for disposal --- all of the above in an attempt to recover a relatively small amount of PMs (Precious Metals) all of which simply CAN NOT be recovered by wet chem leaching of whole boards (even if they are shredded & incinerated)

Example; - 5 gallons HCl leach plus 10 gallons water to wash HCl leach out of the ash/fiberglass = 15 gallons chem waste

Next leach - 5 gallons nitric leach plus 10 gallons water to wash nitric leach out of ash/fiberglass = 15 gallons chem waste

Next leach - 5 gallons AR leach plus 10 gallons water to wash AR leach out of ash/fiberglass = 15 gallons chem waste

You now have 45 gallons of TOXIC chem waste that will require more of your time & more chems to make all the TOXIC waste safe for disposal

That is just an example & in reality the amount of TOXIC waste you create will be MORE then that (to do it all right)

There is VERY GOOD reason why NONE of the BIG BOYS use wet chem leaching to recover values from CBs -they ALL use a smelting process


That (5kg) is NOT a big batch & in fact a VERY SMALL batch

To put it in perspective (call the 5 kg 10 pounds)

If you send 1 ton (2,000 pounds) of "mixed" CBs to an actual CB smelter they will recover between 3.5 - 5 ozt. gold (depending on the mix of board) so lets go with the high 5 ozt per ton recovery number

That means out of 10 pounds of "mixed" boards you would only recover "about" 0.7775 grams of gold - IF (the BIG IF) you recovered ALL the gold - which you will NOT do with wet chem leaching

Granted - if you leached NOTHING but 10 pounds of cell phone boards you will get "much" better recovery - BUT - the cost will most certainly exceed the recovered values with wet leaching for all the reasons explained above

There is a VERY GOOD reason why the BIG BOYS - NEVER - leach whole (shredded/incinerated) CBs but instead ALWAYS smelt them

Kurt

The explation of the chemical treatment failure vs smelter is elaborate and inefficient to the subject of the posted problem.
The posted subjeft refers to why the process produces a goo and what can be done about.
Kurt argument is in the retheric of the electronic scrap consolidators and smelter to why a chfmical process should fail and is more toxic or at least more pullutant than smelting not even talking about being less efficient. -> which is incorrect answer to the post and the answer is a statement not an explanation why the platnor will fail.
The correct statemnt is that the smelter is today the only industrial process that can recover in a simple process electronuc scrap ( we are talking assembled printed circuuts boards) in a three step operation: collecting, shredding and smelting. The advantage of a smelter i that once shredded it can feed the material in a continuous process which recover silver, gold and platium group metals ( if present) in the 15-18% of the copper from the boad alone or in combination witb other copper scrap or concentrate. The sales point is that it can recover 98-99% of the value but forgets to mention that the losses are 5-7% in shredding and it could be as high as 60% in the smelter. The supplier find soon enough the truth when ge gets paid 40-60% and sometimes less. Read about the recent Aurubis smelter "incident" in Germany and try to understand how is possible for the arrested Middle East emigrants to steal a suspected couple of euro and the company to miss 160 millions. The pen is mightier than the sword.
So now back to the subject.

1. The goo is your water base polymer used as solder mask and copper solenoids laqueor, the polyester and polyester parts and the resin from the FR4 (fiberglass substrate code for the printed circuit boards material) that dissolves in hydro and nitric acid. The longer the contact time more dissolves and in the soup of disolved metals who knows what new polymerization reaction is catalyzed instead of breking them hown to C,H,O,S and gases of Br, F, I and N.

2. If you dont burn or pyrolize or smelt your parts you will react only with the exposed pins, shield, wire etc until the indulation start breking down and expose more metal. Since you use HCL first you will not attack any precious metals and ehrn switch to nitric you could disolve some silver if anywhere exposed. Otherwise only the base metals will be dissolved.

3. If you have any precious metals physically entrapped in the goo you could, but not recommend, dissolve it in organic solvent or burn it after you scoop it out and consolidate the ash with your downstream solids.

Learning is the only way to deal with complex chemical - economic problems and a forum is good if your piers answer to your question begire trying to convince you that you are wrong. Start by googling the subject of curcuit boards research and papers the study smelting vs other ideas. Smelting is the industrial status quo but is not even as good or ecologic as it claims. In fact it is marginaly economic and grossly pollution source: from each ton of boards produces 0.5 ton of slag, 0.3 ton of carbon dioxide and 80 kg of chlorine, bromine, iodine gas and sulfur and nitrogen dioxides.

Unfortunately there is no currently in operation a better process to handle this waste at industrial scale and the investors behind Glencore, Aurubis, Boliden are squashing financially all R&D in alternatives because...they can pay obtuse environment emoloyees to dance to their song to fool you.

 

[Yggdrasil]

The explation of the chemical treatment failure vs smelter is elaborate and inefficient to the subject of the posted problem.
The posted subjeft refers to why the process produces a goo and what can be done about.
Kurt argument is in the retheric of the electronic scrap consolidators and smelter to why a chfmical process should fail and is more toxic or at least more pullutant than smelting not even talking about being less efficient. -> which is incorrect answer to the post and the answer is a statement not an explanation why the platnor will fail.
The correct statemnt is that the smelter is today the only industrial process that can recover in a simple process electronuc scrap ( we are talking assembled printed circuuts boards) in a three step operation: collecting, shredding and smelting. The advantage of a smelter i that once shredded it can feed the material in a continuous process which recover silver, gold and platium group metals ( if present) in the 15-18% of the copper from the boad alone or in combination witb other copper scrap or concentrate. The sales point is that it can recover 98-99% of the value but forgets to mention that the losses are 5-7% in shredding and it could be as high as 60% in the smelter. The supplier find soon enough the truth when ge gets paid 40-60% and sometimes less. Read about the recent Aurubis smelter "incident" in Germany and try to understand how is possible for the arrested Middle East emigrants to steal a suspected couple of euro and the company to miss 160 millions. The pen is mightier than the sword.
So now back to the subject.

1. The goo is your water base polymer used as solder mask and copper solenoids laqueor, the polyester and polyester parts and the resin from the FR4 (fiberglass substrate code for the printed circuit boards material) that dissolves in hydro and nitric acid. The longer the contact time more dissolves and in the soup of disolved metals who knows what new polymerization reaction is catalyzed instead of breking them hown to C,H,O,S and gases of Br, F, I and N.

2. If you dont burn or pyrolize or smelt your parts you will react only with the exposed pins, shield, wire etc until the indulation start breking down and expose more metal. Since you use HCL first you will not attack any precious metals and ehrn switch to nitric you could disolve some silver if anywhere exposed. Otherwise only the base metals will be dissolved.

3. If you have any precious metals physically entrapped in the goo you could, but not recommend, dissolve it in organic solvent or burn it after you scoop it out and consolidate the ash with your downstream solids.

Learning is the only way to deal with complex chemical - economic problems and a forum is good if your piers answer to your question begire trying to convince you that you are wrong. Start by googling the subject of curcuit boards research and papers the study smelting vs other ideas. Smelting is the industrial status quo but is not even as good or ecologic as it claims. In fact it is marginaly economic and grossly pollution source: from each ton of boards produces 0.5 ton of slag, 0.3 ton of carbon dioxide and 80 kg of chlorine, bromine, iodine gas and sulfur and nitrogen dioxides.

Unfortunately there is no currently in operation a better process to handle this waste at industrial scale and the investors behind Glencore, Aurubis, Boliden are squashing financially all R&D in alternatives because...they can pay obtuse environment emoloyees to dance to their song to fool you.

And you fail to understand Kurt's reasoning by his answer.
The OP has failed and created a problem to himself, too late to avoid that.
Kurt then shows the way it should have done.
He should have started with research and studies, which he did not.
I gave him the links to do some research.
We really prefer the members to do their own research, because then they know how
and do not need to ask every time something unexpected happens.
The only thing missing, is to tell him to stow away his chemicals and material while studying.

Patnor also says how it should have been done, even before smelting.
It is ALWAYS beneficial to sort and separate the types of scrap before processing, this goes to all ways of processing.
And the losses for the major processors are in most cases not real since they recover it later when the process the dust and ashes from the exhaust flues. And they buy their material and do not process for customers.

After the OP realizes what he should have done, we usually start dealing with the issue at hand.
The other way around often end up with a massive thread with asking an increasing amount
of questions that should have been resolved by the initial studies.

As to the waste treatment part of the smelting vs wet chemistry,
It is a no brainer, slags do net need further treatment and can be disposed in any waste station.
The waste from wet chemistry need to be treated properly with cementing and hydroxide dropping
before you and up with a solid waste fraction that can be disposed of in a proper manner.
Volumes, weights and time needed for this is significantly higher per mass unit of feed stock.
Additionally the recovery rates are usually much lower since there are parts of the feed stock
that will be out of access for any leachant.
Any smelter operation that is set up properly will not have this kind of losses, and if it is properly pyrolized the gases form the pyrolizing will be collected and contained.

Personally I have not researched what kind of publicized material there is on smelting ,
but I doubt there is any more secrets there then on other parts of PM recovery.

 

[user 73658]

No offence to you, because we are all annonymous here, but....before starting an argument think to exactly what you stated: 1. start by knowing the subject before you answer. 2. answer the problem and let the author to think to the best solution.
So OP has a problem that regardless if you think the smelter can do better without doing point 1 yourself, because what you believe is irrelevant to the question if God or absolute truth exist, it does not tell him why he end up in the goo mess.
Otherwise OP has to believe what Kurt and you insist that he is wrong and you are correct.
If you state that if you know PM smelting and in larger are smelting and that there is no difference betwen different smelting processes and smelting of diffeent feeds it may make OP think that you too, use the consolidators and smelter rhetoric and get disgusted and discourage to try to learn and try new things (at least new for him).

Comment to yaggdrasil:
1. As I said we are all annonymous here and I don't make any assumptions to any smelting operation and your experience and knowledge with any of them.
So for the sake of the stated fact that a smelter do not looses anything and to OP's benefit: smelting is a process that changes the chemical properties of material, such sulfides and oxides of metals (which are chemical complexes and not metals) to metal, while melting do not makes any changes to that but makes changes to the physical properties of a metal from solid to liquid and vice versa.
Copper, silver, gold, pgm and nickel are present as metals, so are getting melted, lead, zinc, aluminum, iron, tin and some other 50 metals present, are present as metals and oxides which are partially melted and partially oxidated and report to slag. Some of those metals make very stable alloys called solid solutions with precious metals, and due to the complexity of the system report to the slag and incure process losses. Other losses of precious metals come from physical entrapment of particles of copper in the slag which incure more and sometimes the most of losses. Those loses are specific to the particular feed, smelting technology, design of the furnace and not the last the operator and the procedure. Is not unheard to see copper loses being 1% or more per ton of slag and most efficient smelter do not exeed 98% copper recovery
Lets say that ton of scrap assay 20% copper and 100 g gold (for the point of conversation will leave silver and palladium out). Theoretically if melted, the 200 kg of copper will alloy with 100g of gold and it means each kg of copper will have 0.5 g of gold. From one ton of scrap if processed alone will result half of ton of slag and more if any fluxes are usef. To collect 1 ton of copper, 5 ton of scrap has to be processed and 2.5 ton of slag produced. The one ton copper should hold 500 g of gold. If the furnace recovers 99% of the copper it means will loose 10 kg of copper to every 1000 kg melted from 5 ton of scrap. It means will lose 5 grams of gold. The analysis only factor the copper and gold without any interference from the other metals. Those 5 grams of gold are found in the the 2.5 ton of slag making the slag richer than many gold ore but almost impossible to recover at a cost less than the gold value. Just in this simple model the smelter lost 1% of the gold.
A model of smelter efficiency processing electronic scrap vs copper concentrate is impossible to estimate at less than +/-15-20% because the diffeent characteristics method of preparation, sampling, analysis and processing. Smelter like that,.. to jogle with the payments to customers and sometimes when get to cocky or have wizard accountants end up justifying hundred of millions loses by catching small time thiefs stealing few hundred thousand.
2. Smelter do not buy the scrap. Unless the seller accept to receive an anticipated financed (%) payment of 50% to 80% of the assay value minus the whatever scheme the smelter design to show he only charges for expenses of assay and for processing after he applys the calculated "loses" when the results are available, the seller gets paid 30 to 120 days after the shipment was received at smelter facility.
3. To the OP subject I will not comment on someone else question how a smelter makes his money.

 

[user 73658]

Hello everyone i hope you are having a good day!!
And I hope this is the right procedure to ask question about gold refining

I started recovering gold in small quantities in small containers and at the end i ended up recovering more platinum, palladium, copper, silver and small quantities of gold

Lately my friends and customers gave me a lot of phones, computer and other electronics, took them apart and removed as much iron and base metals as possible and wanted to speed up the process i started processing big quantities of boards (5kg) of mixed boards but i ended up with a goo and stuck, not knowing what to do next, luckily i recover everything by cementing and got rid of junk and kill the acids and dispose them

First question: is there another way to refine platinum without boiling?
I don't have space at this moment to set up a heater and let it run for three hours

And i would like to listen yo your advice after you read about the process
I came out with:
I take apart the whole phone or device, remove as much iron, aluminum, plastic and other junk
Big pieces of copper i set them aside
Then i break the board down to small pieces, burn it, put it in a 5 gallon bucket, add hydrochloric acid, leave it for three days, empty and refill again and leave for three days, empty container and add new hydrochloric acid and add nitric acid ass needed to resolve most of the metals (platinum wont dissolve in aquaregia at room temperature) so i set it aside, since i ended up with dirty aquaregia i cement it and removed the copper, boiling the remaining precious metals, wash and save for further refining

(Sometimes i pulverize the boards) just to experiment with the boards

I want to know if there is a way to do this process without boiling l, for the moment i cant set up a stove or heater because lack of space
I attached some pictures of the process

I need your advice please, i think i got more than i can chew, i am talking about maybe 50 kg of cleaned, pulverize boards, i think there is more palladium and platinum than gold in there, i attached some pictures of the materials i have cleaned, the bags feel heavy one of them is about 3 kg

I drop the gold with smd
The palladium with zinc
And platinum with ammonium
If you can help me with your advice i really appreciate it, thanks

Start by knowing what you have in hand.
1. Where are the precious metals and why are there?
A. Gold is the best conductor and is found inside the logic elements as wire between transistors and diodes. All logic system are gates. Diode one way, transistors three way. Between them gold wire.
Gold is best innert material so will be coating surfaces that are in mechanical contact to reduce oxidation due to arching. Pins, fingers, pads. Made of steel, brass or copper those surfaces are first nickel plated as chemical barrier then Au and up to 10% Co alloy plated.
B. Palladium and platinum are rarely used because are not as good as gold and only when their market price is below the gold one. If look back to the '90s gold was 300 and palladium was 100 while platimum was 600. Early 2000 gold went to 600, palladium and platinum over 1000. Today gold is 2000 while palladium and platinum 900. Age of the waste indicates what to expet and in what amount.

Regarless what you end up doing start segregating as much as you can by type of material and keep in mind that the substrate has only about 10 in value as metals. That is valid if you process yourself or sale to someone to process it.
A good meter of the values is at boardsort.com.
I have no connection with the site nor ever contacted or talked to them.

 

[Yggdrasil]

No offence to you, because we are all annonymous here, but....before starting an argument think to exactly what you stated: 1. start by knowing the subject before you answer. 2. answer the problem and let the author to think to the best solution.
So OP has a problem that regardless if you think the smelter can do better without doing point 1 yourself, because what you believe is irrelevant to the question if God or absolute truth exist, it does not tell him why he end up in the goo mess.
Otherwise OP has to believe what Kurt and you insist that he is wrong and you are correct.
If you state that if you know PM smelting and in larger are smelting and that there is no difference betwen different smelting processes and smelting of diffeent feeds it may make OP think that you too, use the consolidators and smelter rhetoric and get disgusted and discourage to try to learn and try new things (at least new for him).

Comment to yaggdrasil:
1. As I said we are all annonymous here and I don't make any assumptions to any smelting operation and your experience and knowledge with any of them.
So for the sake of the stated fact that a smelter do not looses anything and to OP's benefit: smelting is a process that changes the chemical properties of material, such sulfides and oxides of metals (which are chemical complexes and not metals) to metal, while melting do not makes any changes to that but makes changes to the physical properties of a metal from solid to liquid and vice versa.
Copper, silver, gold, pgm and nickel are present as metals, so are getting melted, lead, zinc, aluminum, iron, tin and some other 50 metals present, are present as metals and oxides which are partially melted and partially oxidated and report to slag. Some of those metals make very stable alloys called solid solutions with precious metals, and due to the complexity of the system report to the slag and incure process losses. Other losses of precious metals come from physical entrapment of particles of copper in the slag which incure more and sometimes the most of losses. Those loses are specific to the particular feed, smelting technology, design of the furnace and not the last the operator and the procedure. Is not unheard to see copper loses being 1% or more per ton of slag and most efficient smelter do not exeed 98% copper recovery
Lets say that ton of scrap assay 20% copper and 100 g gold (for the point of conversation will leave silver and palladium out). Theoretically if melted, the 200 kg of copper will alloy with 100g of gold and it means each kg of copper will have 0.5 g of gold. From one ton of scrap if processed alone will result half of ton of slag and more if any fluxes are usef. To collect 1 ton of copper, 5 ton of scrap has to be processed and 2.5 ton of slag produced. The one ton copper should hold 500 g of gold. If the furnace recovers 99% of the copper it means will loose 10 kg of copper to every 1000 kg melted from 5 ton of scrap. It means will lose 5 grams of gold. The analysis only factor the copper and gold without any interference from the other metals. Those 5 grams of gold are found in the the 2.5 ton of slag making the slag richer than many gold ore but almost impossible to recover at a cost less than the gold value. Just in this simple model the smelter lost 1% of the gold.
A model of smelter efficiency processing electronic scrap vs copper concentrate is impossible to estimate at less than +/-15-20% because the diffeent characteristics method of preparation, sampling, analysis and processing. Smelter like that,.. to jogle with the payments to customers and sometimes when get to cocky or have wizard accountants end up justifying hundred of millions loses by catching small time thiefs stealing few hundred thousand.
2. Smelter do not buy the scrap. Unless the seller accept to receive an anticipated financed (%) payment of 50% to 80% of the assay value minus the whatever scheme the smelter design to show he only charges for expenses of assay and for processing after he applys the calculated "loses" when the results are available, the seller gets paid 30 to 120 days after the shipment was received at smelter facility.
3. To the OP subject I will not comment on someone else question how a smelter makes his money.

Can you please use the reply button on the post you comment to.
This way it is easy to see who you addressing, now much of the post is open in the respect of who you are addressing.

To the part off the post addressed to me.
I commented on it in view from what you said about the large processors.
The ones holding alleged secrets which will be the industrial processors like
Glencore, Aurubis, Boliden, Mitsubishi among others.
As far as I know these do not process on behalf of any mall scale party.
All of the customers they have know intimately the content of what they ship and what to expect in return.

And any of these will as far as I know grind up their slags and reprocess them by reintroducing it into the process again.

 

[user 73658]

Can you please use the reply button on the post you comment to.
This way it is easy to see who you addressing, now much of the post is open in the respect of who you are addressing.

To the part off the post addressed to me.
I commented on it in view from what you said about the large processors.
The ones holding alleged secrets which will be the industrial processors like
Glencore, Aurubis, Boliden, Mitsubishi among others.
As far as I know these do not process on behalf of any mall scale party.
All of the customers they have know intimately the content of what they ship and what to expect in return.

And any of these will as far as I know grind up their slags and reprocess them by reintroducing it into the process again.

As I said I dont know who you are and what you know but I see statements that seems like marketing, don't answer member question and mislead the members. What one don't know may appear as secret to the one that knows. In simple therms is know-how. Because smelter dont say it, is not a secret to the engineering and scientific media and if you are marketing their rethoric, you may know it. The evidence not being a secret is in the public domain if you know what and where to look for and understand what you read. However, knowing the information and misleading is unethical on those public more likely honest debate groups. There are no small scale smelting operations for electronic boards. There are small melting operation all over less regulated world.

"As far as I know these do not process on behalf of any mall scale party."

That is correct. None accepts less than truck load lots and some even as far as minumum 20t. Only consolidators (exception Simms Recycling) have that volume and contracts to deal with a smelter.

"All of the customers they have know intimately the content of what they ship and what to expect in return."

Hmmm. You seem to talk like someone from inside of a consolidator or smelter. No one knows intimately what is the metal content in the scrap. Maybe, maybe the smelter produces operation mass balance but cant extrapolate that to a particular lot because the process is continuous and the furnaces are designed for capacities of 10 to 20 t/h. The consolidator or the smelter crushes the boards by lot and take/split 15% of the process output for a +/-15-20% accuracy representative sample. The plus and minus means that it could be that much variation in the sample result from the real metal content. The sample is split again and 15% taken. Finally a sample of 1.5% of the lot is homogenized, pyrolised and digested to be assayed. The assay procedure is fairly safe from error if there is no tempering with the digestion and dilution and the residue is scanned for losses. Whereever thats done, the seller gets a assay result that includes also a calculation showing how much will be charged transportation to consolidator, charge per lot by weight for processing ( processing means loading, crushing, sampling, pyrolysis, transfer to smelting, assay and accountability paperwork to track the values) what is the payable metal AFTER loses deduction. That is ISO standard of sampling and presmelting procedure. The only problem is that those splits have to have very low and very uniform particle size and weight. And crushing the boards you get nothing close to that on size and particle weight. And here comes the nice gimmick: the sample is tumbled to "homogenize" the distribution. Tumbling mixture of various size and weight particles increases their segregation instead uniforming the distribution. (Maybe you saw how a crush sample looks like).
Does it sound so far that the first seller, the consolidator and the smelter knows intimately whats send to processing? Any more than a feeling deducted on the type of boards becoming intimate knowledge, because the history of smelter settlement statements? Has anyone seen the balance of that statement justified by anything than the statement? That's a self sustaining statement.

"And any of these will as far as I know grind up their slags and reprocess them by reintroducing it into the process again."

That's a confession? From your "knowledge" any seller got a letter at the end of the year saying:
Dear seller, we reprocess the slag and here is the check as complete return value of your scrap?

Loading in a furnace a ton of copper concentrate of $2000 + value cost today $ 160 to 200 processing. If the boards slag has 2 g of gold and 10 kg of copper, $200 start value, at 90% recovery (which is fantastic work), the potential recovery value is $ 180. What can the smelter recover and what it can pay back? So the slag may be stored for later when metal price goes up, used as "financial assest" for corrupted financial institutions or landfilled. Thats what realy happens. They cant afford to process the slag...unless there is no good grade feed and because the furnace cannot be shut down and put on sleep mode, they may feed some slag until more feed is in hand. To elaborate more on this topic, and IF you don't know it "intimatelly", I need to charge you college education fees.

 

[Yggdrasil]

As I said I dont know who you are and what you know but I see statements that seems like marketing, don't answer member question and mislead the members. What one don't know may appear as secret to the one that knows. In simple therms is know-how. Because smelter dont say it, is not a secret to the engineering and scientific media and if you are marketing their rethoric, you may know it. The evidence not being a secret is in the public domain if you know what and where to look for and understand what you read. However, knowing the information and misleading is unethical on those public more likely honest debate groups. There are no small scale smelting operations for electronic boards. There are small melting operation all over less regulated world.

"As far as I know these do not process on behalf of any mall scale party."

That is correct. None accepts less than truck load lots and some even as far as minumum 20t. Only consolidators (exception Simms Recycling) have that volume and contracts to deal with a smelter.

"All of the customers they have know intimately the content of what they ship and what to expect in return."

Hmmm. You seem to talk like someone from inside of a consolidator or smelter. No one knows intimately what is the metal content in the scrap. Maybe, maybe the smelter produces operation mass balance but cant extrapolate that to a particular lot because the process is continuous and the furnaces are designed for capacities of 10 to 20 t/h. The consolidator or the smelter crushes the boards by lot and take/split 15% of the process output for a +/-15-20% accuracy representative sample. The plus and minus means that it could be that much variation in the sample result from the real metal content. The sample is split again and 15% taken. Finally a sample of 1.5% of the lot is homogenized, pyrolised and digested to be assayed. The assay procedure is fairly safe from error if there is no tempering with the digestion and dilution and the residue is scanned for losses. Whereever thats done, the seller gets a assay result that includes also a calculation showing how much will be charged transportation to consolidator, charge per lot by weight for processing ( processing means loading, crushing, sampling, pyrolysis, transfer to smelting, assay and accountability paperwork to track the values) what is the payable metal AFTER loses deduction. That is ISO standard of sampling and presmelting procedure. The only problem is that those splits have to have very low and very uniform particle size and weight. And crushing the boards you get nothing close to that on size and particle weight. And here comes the nice gimmick: the sample is tumbled to "homogenize" the distribution. Tumbling mixture of various size and weight particles increases their segregation instead uniforming the distribution. (Maybe you saw how a crush sample looks like).
Does it sound so far that the first seller, the consolidator and the smelter knows intimately whats send to processing? Any more than a feeling deducted on the type of boards becoming intimate knowledge, because the history of smelter settlement statements? Has anyone seen the balance of that statement justified by anything than the statement? That's a self sustaining statement.

"And any of these will as far as I know grind up their slags and reprocess them by reintroducing it into the process again."

That's a confession? From your "knowledge" any seller got a letter at the end of the year saying:
Dear seller, we reprocess the slag and here is the check as complete return value of your scrap?

Loading in a furnace a ton of copper concentrate of $2000 + value cost today $ 160 to 200 processing. If the boards slag has 2 g of gold and 10 kg of copper, $200 start value, at 90% recovery (which is fantastic work), the potential recovery value is $ 180. What can the smelter recover and what it can pay back? So the slag may be stored for later when metal price goes up, used as "financial assest" for corrupted financial institutions or landfilled. Thats what realy happens. They cant afford to process the slag...unless there is no good grade feed and because the furnace cannot be shut down and put on sleep mode, they may feed some slag until more feed is in hand. To elaborate more on this topic, and IF you don't know it "intimatelly", I need to charge you college education fees.

There is a lot talking her and speculations.
I have to apologize though for some inaccuracies in the beginning.
In my language we don't distinguish between melting and smelting so I got swept away with the lingo of the thread.

And no I'm not into anything else than being a moderator in this forum.
As such I try to keep things in a good direction and ask questions to clarify things when it is unclear.
I have never been more then in amateur scale processor.

But I have picked up how people run their things.
No one buys anything or accepts to process anything unless it is properly assayed and tested
and the one selling or having their items processed do the same thing.
So the values are most certainly well tested in both ends.

I will let the ones doing this, take over from here.

 

[user 73658]

There is a lot talking her and speculations.
I have to apologize though for some inaccuracies in the beginning.
In my language we don't distinguish between melting and smelting so I got swept away with the lingo of the thread.

And no I'm not into anything else than being a moderator in this forum.
As such I try to keep things in a good direction and ask questions to clarify things when it is unclear.
I have never been more then in amateur scale processor.

But I have picked up how people run their things.
No one buys anything or accepts to process anything unless it is properly assayed and tested
and the one selling or having their items processed do the same thing.
So the values are most certainly well tested in both ends.

I will let the ones doing this, take over from here.

Everyone believes that he has the best channel to get the most of his crap. And they all are correct because the small generators have to go to a collectors to go to the shelter. We're initially this melters were settling on the smelter essay they have expanded and with the blessing of the smelter they are asking in producing results for the settlement between the smelter and the seller or collector the small collector. Whichever scheme of presentation the smelter provide they all claim they they deliver 100% of the value. Which is incorrect and absolutely not true. If you moderate only without having the experiencing the field it's easy to be deceived believing that what you hear is the reality. The smoke collectors have no intimate knowledge of what they send to The collector and if the collector does not crush and correctly sample the products they have an approximate value on which the smelter agrees because they have a safety valve. The safety valve is that they introduce deduction both the metal value based on the essay and based on the scale of concentration in the sample. So if they are negatively wrong on the sampling they do have the safety valve to not lose money if they are positively wrong on the sampling then they make a lot of money. Parker Lewis never lose.
However you are correct and your assumption that there is nothing better today on industrial scale than smelting to recover the metals.

 

[Spaceships]

Clearly acids are not very efficient products to refine gold plated boards on a large or small scale.

I have not tried cyanide leaching and certainly wouldn't try until I am more educated and have a very good understanding of not only how it works but also how to effectively recover gold and other precious metal from the solution, this is something that I plan to study when I get more time to focus on it.

My question is for you that have experience with cyanide, is it a efficient method for gold plated boards and is there any profit to be made after the purchase of the chemicals needed for using it on a small scale, maybe anything from a few lbs up to 100 lbs of plated boards ?

Also what is your experience/opinion on using cyanide for gold plated pins on smaller batches of pins ?

Cyanide certainly comes into its own with gold plated parts. You don't need to dissolve up kilos of material to get a gramme of gold. You can strip plating quickly and efficiently if you use it properly with much less waste. It also has a whole heap of other uses once you're completely good with it. Yes it's a whole new set of chemistry to learn but handled correctly it's not as dangerous as is sometimes reported. Those (very valid) dangers arise from a lack of knowledge and poor handling. You see unlike acid chemistry where you might end up with a burn, the simplest way to view it is that if you get it wrong with cyanide there are no second chances. That's the point to keep in mind as you are using it and any experienced operator never forgets this.

I've used it for a decade now, having learned the ropes from Nick. I'm still extremely careful as I should be and I invested a lot of time learning the Chemistry behind it with a lot of help from a few very experienced members on here.

It is definitely worth the investment to learn to do it properly, and you'd need to find someone local who can educate you in a hands on basis. You can't learn it properly over the phone or via video.

Hope that helps.