Electronic scrap recycling and refining.

[anachronism]

The processes you are talking about can bring you more money working on LOW grade material. i.e. under 25ppm gold or 25g per tonne.

Brown power board?

A lot of the brown power board is far far lower than that.

Edit: Think about all the toxic components of a board. A refinery deals with those as part of the fee. Waste management doesn't come cheap and people aren't factoring that in.

 

[snoman701]

The processes you are talking about can bring you more money working on LOW grade material. i.e. under 25ppm gold or 25g per tonne.

Brown power board?

A lot of the brown power board is far far lower than that.

Edit: Think about all the toxic components of a board. A refinery deals with those as part of the fee. Waste management doesn't come cheap and people aren't factoring that in.

I didn't consider how much 25ppm actually is until after I had posted.

But waste management is just like everything else...less expensive at a larger scale.

The only thing the little guy has at his disposal is flexibility.

 

[rickzeien]

What is the price per ton/pound of brown board. Extracted value of gold is 51 cents a pound more or less?

What are the other values?

Copper? Other PMs?

I am calculating a short ton.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

[4metals]

I think for a while you were trying to granulate boards and recover metals from the pulp...get anywhere?

Actually yes, granulation, pyrolysis, smelting to make copper base bullion, and electrolytic copper refining. It is set up more in countries where labor is cheaper as the dis-assembly can require some man hours.

But if we think about it, e-scrap is richer than the best mining ore there is. Back in the day, OK all the way back to ancient times, metal (copper, gold, silver, iron, lots of metals) were found weathering on the surface and it was there for the picking. As more was picked up, or another way to put it, once the low hanging fruit was gathered, they had to go to the next step and dig for it. Then, when the veins were collected the next step was to dig it up with the surrounding ground and crush sift and leach it to do the recovery. As you can imagine, the picking up the gold found exposed was what the '49ers experienced in the California gold rush. Placer gold and dry bank nuggets were easy pickings. Then as it dried up, they started to tunnel and follow the veins and chisel out the good stuff. More labor and if got to be more than a 1 man operation. Actually some tunneling operations are huge operations. Then came the "just dig up an entire geological formation and mill it and screen it phase" and that was even more labor intensive and involved bigger investment.

Well, today the e-scrap miners don't have to dig for it and once it is separated the good stuff runs multiple ounces per ton. (And the overburden that the miners had to get rid of the e-scrap miner can het paid for if it is separated.) That is better than the yields from the mammoth excavators, dump trucks and crushers get for considerably less effort. And since so many people consider electronic and computer circuitry a waste, it can be had for a song.

That is the open door for refiners. If you can effectively collect this material for little or no money, you can classify it and ship it to larger refiners. There are many old threads about sampling e scrap on this forum which can help to "quantify" your material before you ship it out. Or you can segregate it and sell it to buyers who pay by the pound for chips and all the types of circuits and boards discussed on this forum. Once you get to a positive cash flow you can select the best material and start your own processing and continue to ship the balance, all the time maximizing your profits. The end game for this is the copper smelting which usually is operated off the copper value leaving the PM's as the real profit.

In time, your experience will tell you when it is cheaper to ship it than to refine it. Every refiner has a niche. And working in your niche is where you are the most effective and profitable. Knowing what fits into your specific niche is called experience. And the road to experience starts with the first step. Fortunately there are a good number of knowledgeable members here who can guide you and help you avoid the mistakes that all of the new refiners make. It just requires commitment on your part.

 

[denim]

When it comes to ewaste I believe we can mostly agree that the cost is in the recovery of the precious metals, not the refining of them. There certainly seems to be a much bigger need for innovation and discussion in the recovery of the pm's. That being said I am submitting that we change the name of this great forum to Gold Recovery From Ewaste Forum.com.

 

[anachronism]

When it comes to ewaste I believe we can mostly agree that the cost is in the recovery of the precious metals, not the refining of them. There certainly seems to be a much bigger need for innovation and discussion in the recovery of the pm's. That being said I am submitting that we change the name of this great forum to Gold Recovery From Ewaste Forum.com.

Aha! There you have the crux of the matter. The skill is in recovery, not refining. I think it was Harold who mentioned that you can train a monkey to refine gold, but getting the gold out is another matter entirely. Denim this post isn't pointed at you even though I use the word "you" a great deal. 8) 8)

As 4metals mentioned, copper refining is the bedrock of a lot of the processes used commercially.

Motherboards/daughterboards/backplanes etc all have varying degrees of copper percentage. That percentage in most cases is north of 20% for most reasonable grades of IT ewaste boards. When you look at it in cold hard cash terms IF you have a good refinery contract, the copper fraction of the boards you send in to be refined more often than not covers the whole cost of the commercial refining process from shipping to refinery charges.

This means you get your Gold, Silver, Palladium content at very close to the full values of the contents of the product.

Processing the boards yourself doesn't do that. You cannot recover all the copper at the same cost as a refinery doing it, and by association you don't have the efficiency in your processes to do it. Also you do not have the efficiency to recover all the PMs and PGMs to the level a commercial refinery can do it.

Thus by definition it is cheaper to send the product to a good refinery because on balance you will achieve a better cash return.

If you listen to this advice, that means your whole time can be spent sourcing, buying, sorting, and shipping product. You can do one heck of a lot more of that when you're not involved in an end to end relatively ineffective process that is not only costing you money in real terms, but sucking up 90% of your time.

Yes refineries make money. Yes on balance a small part of the value of the product goes into their pocket. Yes they keep a variety of metals that you don't get paid for. That's the way of the world and the way that business works. As Dean would say "it's the cost of doing business." Deal with it, factor it in, and get on with finding more product to make more of your own money rather than worrying about someone else making some money too.

You can do very nicely at this if you square this away in your head and just get on with it. The alternative is to chase "profit" that on balance really isn't there when everything is taken into account.

Jon

 

[niks neims]

Recently I have been getting a sense that the forum is a bit stagnant [..] Let’s give this thread another go please!

Very good point, thank you for the nudge

Only reason I was holding back is because my interest in e-waste lies much more in the business end of the things, an there is much much more to it than just recovery & refining, so I was holding myself back not to hi-jack the thread, but it seems that there have been a heavy interest by senior members that I would consider models in e-waste business and I would really like to use the opportunity to learn something more from you guys

so a disclaimer first: I do not really consider myself a refiner, in truth the process of actual chemical refining is not suited for my character at all, filters break, beakers fall over, AuCl spills out, reactions get away from me & bubble over, it is not safe or economic by any means, I rarely write anything down, sometimes it is fun but most of the time it is annoying more so. I do, however, believe that I have a knack for business and lately I've been focusing on e-waste recycling... I am sorry, Aristo, if my post is not much help to you, you already have 10 times the turnover I currently have, but I hope it at least achieves the goal of furthering the discussion in some way....

The beginning:
What is with the interest in the WEEE at all, one might wonder, why focus attention to this particular field of waste management? Well it starts with a perceived gap between the retail "pricing" and "real value" contained in this material:

1)Most scrap-yards buy up different PCBs at close to boardsort.com prices (their price-list is public, so I believe we can discuss it openly here ), I mean there is some variation from here to there, but at a small scale (<100 kg) it mostly is quite comparable;
Let's take "small socket MB" as a example - they are at about 2.8 Eur/kg... I think every one of business guys (Jon, silver, snoman) here would consider it a good deal to buy them up at <2 eur/kg and sell at >4 eur/kg (assuming they haven't been depopulated in any way, etc.), I know I would... So the international "retail", small volume price for this commodity is well known...

2)Through various sources on-line you can learn that the price of different metals in those same boards would amount to much higher value, at first it is very vague but it definitely raises interest and the more you learn, the more you know... Somewhat freely accessible knowledge like GRF or even youtube is one thing, but once you start to communicate with larger refiners or receive their financial offers you find that there truly is this huge gap in the value I mentioned earlier... Of course at this level the information is very guarded, and no way would I disclose specific numbers the refiner has quoted me, but the gap is definitely there; To be acceptably vague I'd say I believe the "total metal value" of "small socket MB" is about twice the price I quoted earlier....

3)So there you go - theoretically you could get your PCBs for "a song", some elbow grease or just 3 eur/kg, and sell them for 5 eur/kg upwards... But no - at my (admittedly, low, ~1-2 tons of boards per month) volume, the financial offers for refining that I get from "big guys", while, in my opinion, truthful regarding yields, all quote unreasonably high treatment and refining charges... so high in fact, that taking logistics in to account it is more profitable to sell PCBs locally (while getting a little bonus to the 3 eur/kg price due to a larger volume)...

And then I remember reading here that "large scale recovery and refining" is very efficient process and should realistically cost about 10%-15%, but where does the rest of $ goes? Does the cost of recovery and refining of >30% is adequate or Does the chain from retail to refiner contain so much players that it justifies such a gap in price? Does the volume of boards matter that much? I've currently concluded that apparently so, and committed to raise my turnover and stock volume significantly to get much better refining deal but, still, I feel like I am missing something...

I do try to explore all of the options, but thus far without success:
1. There are many here and elsewhere on the internet that claim to "recycle" but in the end it turns out to be waste of time, best case scenario they just want to buy your boards for less than their established international price and that is it;
2. There was a known member of this forum that claimed to recycle boards himself, and I got a feeling that he was trustworthy, but whence he did a test for small-socket MB his numbers came out much lower than we were expecting, so that too, led nowhere....

This is where I am at currently in regards to global PCB recycling market, I could go on for days about sourcing, sorting, refurbishing, cash-flow etc., but I dare not derail this thread that much, if the forum ever gets renamed to Gold Recovery From Ewaste Forum.com I will return to this subject, since I feel I have so much to ask and learn about business practices from guys like 4metals, anachronism, snoman701, silversaddle1, Aristo and all the others

that is the end of of-topic rambling,

Quantity exceeds 20 tons monthly at the moment and will continue to increase.

Let me ask you, at this level you do not get a decent offer from larger refiners? Have you asked them all, for the most part they seem to be quite approachable and even I - a guy with 10 times less the volume, get polite enough answers....

If even at that level they still ask for 30-40% (vaguely) total from your values, please do explore any possibilities to establish some form of recycling yourself, the big guys are due to some healthy competition

 

[anachronism]

Nik

For steel socket PC motherboards you don't GET over 4 euros per Kg. They refine out at under that. In many cases, the later ones refine out at substantially under that.

That's just the plain facts. The margins are skinny.

Jon

 

[niks neims]

I sent you a PM Jon, I'd rather not share yield data on open forum since they are not mine

But there you can see Aristo, perhaps your first order of business should be to see for yourself "how much is there", best would be if you can do a proper fire assay on some boards by yourself

 

[snoman701]

I get 3.35 euro/kg on small socket motherboards...I considered that to be a pretty competitive price, as it's well above the alternatives.

And even at that price, knowing the components that make up the motherboard, I expect that they are losing money on some of the boards I sell them. On an average, I'm sure they make a little...but not enough to justify me even thinking of buying a 4 shaft shredder for the future of e-scrap (because boards are getting lighter in their value every day).

And since so many people consider electronic and computer circuitry a waste, it can be had for a song.

That is the open door for refiners. If you can effectively collect this material for little or no money, you can classify it and ship it to larger refiners.

It's all dependent upon what one considers little or no money...how much they can collect, and what one needs to survive. But what I see amongst the boots on the ground, is life bordering on poverty.

The guys doing well recycling e-scrap are the ones that either had money going in to it from another venture, or were able to partner with money (be it private equity or banks). They were able to go at quantities, and flip it for 10%...and that is good money seeing as you can do it four to six times a year....and in terms of precious metals, making 10% on a flip is really good money.

But for guys starting out with less than $25,000...it's a hard row to hoe. IF I make it, it will be because of a couple of really generous opportunities from people that could have done better, but chose to give me a chance.

 

[kurtak]

Recently I have been getting a sense that the forum is a bit stagnant. And often when it is slow I go back and read old threads and I become renewed with the potential that this forum has.

Then a thread like this comes along and it is truly about the future growth in the recycling and refining industry. The posted question is valid even if initially vague. But the OP has added information but the responses have been less than stellar. With the exception of Jon’s post there has been little of value. We can do better. E scrap is the future of this industry, and it can be entered on many levels as many current members can attest.

So please see this post as a re- boot of this question. If Aristo would please add more specifics about his feedstock this can turn into a valuable thread for all. Let’s give this thread another go please!

I agree & I wish I had time to contribute more but I am currently putting in 12 hour days at work & have been involved in some projects on the week ends

MAYBE this coming week end

Kurt

 

[Smack]

Like mentioned in this thread, you have to stick to the methods already being used. You can't go trying something new that takes the amount of money we're talking about here and expect to make money. You'd be sticking your neck out across the chopping block. The money being made is being made doing it a certain way, do it that way. I would ask: Do you have a business plan done yet? How many refineries have you toured? I took a guided tour at Sipi Metals way back and they explained the hole process quite well. It shed some much welcomed light on the subject for me. Main question you have to answer to yourself is; How big can I go, how much do I want to spend. If you want to be successful, find someone that's doing what you want to do successfully and copy them. You also need the ability to find and surround yourself with good, skilled people. They are in high demand these days. I don't envy anyone trying to start a business like this in today's world.

I think Corey Pyscher's (cpyscher) business is modeled the same as yours Aristo. He's been processing E-waste and selling to an overseas market (China I think). I spoke with him a few months ago and he sounded pretty busy and no mention of problems with his buyer.

 

[4metals]

I agree, mostly.......

Like mentioned in this thread, you have to stick to the methods already being used.

But if we really believed this we would all still be using outhouses. Sure you need to go along with the status quo and maybe one day while sitting in the outhouse, you will have an epiphany and invent a flush toilet.

I believe you start slowly, and within your means. I believe you let your business pay for expansion. And I believe you experiment with what you have at hand looking for ways to cut costs.

Lots of members realize that some specific circuitry runs well in excess of a few ounces per ton and they have devised methods to concentrate those higher yielding materials to either ship them separately or process them themselves. But no one should, although I am sure some do, say I'm going to plunk down thousands of dollars because I think this is worth it.

Know what you have, stick to methods that are proven, and always try to think outside the box. This forum is full of members who think outside the box and fortunately they share ideas and pose questions and that is how we all grow.

 

[snoman701]

I think for a while you were trying to granulate boards and recover metals from the pulp...get anywhere?

Actually yes, granulation, pyrolysis, smelting to make copper base bullion, and electrolytic copper refining. It is set up more in countries where labor is cheaper as the dis-assembly can require some man hours.

Is there an advantage to granulation vs just standard shredding?

Feedstock is bare boards that have been depopulated?

 

[anachronism]

I think for a while you were trying to granulate boards and recover metals from the pulp...get anywhere?

Actually yes, granulation, pyrolysis, smelting to make copper base bullion, and electrolytic copper refining. It is set up more in countries where labor is cheaper as the dis-assembly can require some man hours.

Is there an advantage to granulation vs just standard shredding?

Feedstock is bare boards that have been depopulated?

That brings me back to my previous post Sno. How are you going to recover 100% of the copper from these?

 

[snoman701]

I think for a while you were trying to granulate boards and recover metals from the pulp...get anywhere?

Actually yes, granulation, pyrolysis, smelting to make copper base bullion, and electrolytic copper refining. It is set up more in countries where labor is cheaper as the dis-assembly can require some man hours.

Is there an advantage to granulation vs just standard shredding?

Feedstock is bare boards that have been depopulated?

That brings me back to my previous post Sno. How are you going to recover 100% of the copper from these?

I’m not...I don’t process boards.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Smack]

I agree, mostly.......

Like mentioned in this thread, you have to stick to the methods already being used.

But if we really believed this we would all still be using outhouses. Sure you need to go along with the status quo and maybe one day while sitting in the outhouse, you will have an epiphany and invent a flush toilet.

I believe you start slowly, and within your means. I believe you let your business pay for expansion. And I believe you experiment with what you have at hand looking for ways to cut costs.

Lots of members realize that some specific circuitry runs well in excess of a few ounces per ton and they have devised methods to concentrate those higher yielding materials to either ship them separately or process them themselves. But no one should, although I am sure some do, say I'm going to plunk down thousands of dollars because I think this is worth it.

Know what you have, stick to methods that are proven, and always try to think outside the box. This forum is full of members who think outside the box and fortunately they share ideas and pose questions and that is how we all grow.

Right and on point 4metals. I was referring to the startup phase only. Once one has a well oiled money maker, definitely work the ideas and experiment.

 

[nrg91720]

Really interesting series of posts guys! I'm also interested in the e-waste recycling & refining business.

 

[modtheworld44]

Aristo


Check your PM's PLease!



modtheworld44

 

[poyalo]

hello to all forum participants!
My name is Alexander, I'm from Russia. Everything is pretty bad in the field of processing boards (as in the rest and in many other respects, but this is a separate topic for discussion =))
I really need to know the approximate exit from the boards with the components. Motherboards (old), Motherboards (new 478 socket and above), video cards and more. I know that the content is measured in ppm (100-200 per ton), but I don’t know what categories have which categories of boards. We rent boards for processing at a local plant, but I'm sure they cheat on us ... Our processing market is not developed - the state does not allow precious metals to be allocated to anyone except state-owned factories and therefore they are monopolists. Please help (if you do not want to advertise this information - you can send it in private messages) I am sure you have much more experience in processing than we do. THANKS IN ADVANCE!
In the photo are examples of our boards that we sort by category.