Geo
Well-known member
samuel-a said:
buy one of those cheap marital aids (a massager) that you plug into the wall and mount a small bowl on to it.
Gold inside chips (black, flatpacks - not CPU)
- Thread starter patnor1011
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buy one of those cheap marital aids (a massager) that you plug into the wall and mount a small bowl on to it.
NoIdea said:
Don't You??? I thought everyone had one. :mrgreen:
Ok, back to what im here for, pyrolyzed electrolytic caps.
The carbon foil in this lot did not stay intack like in previous runs but you can see what i mean by looking at the photo. The remaining aluminium pot weighted 7g and is 50mm long by 30mm in diameter for reference. The foil to the right is the aluminium foil that came out of it.
Next thing to do is put it through my smasher/basher/thrasher and see what sort of mess i end up with. 8)
Deano,
Only the exterior is aluminum, so don't put the guts in with the cans. I have processed may pounds of these type caps., what I found best to do is after you have burnt everything off in low heat like you have. I melt everything in a big dutch oven that has a sst screen that sits inside of it that all the burnt caps. go in. Then when I pull the dutch oven out of the furnace I lift the sst screen out with my furnace gloves on and dump the screen into a steel bucket, then reinsert the screen into the dutch oven and refill with more caps. This process continues untill there is enough aluminum in the oven to justify a pour. I'm not sure what metal the coils are made of, I've just been throwing them in with scrap steel. By the way, you won't like the mess you end up with if you thrash it all together. I run the furnace at about 1400 degrees, the melting aluminum just runs down to the bottom of the dutch oven.
Regards
NoIdea
Well-known member
Geo said:
Ok, i'll say it, i know you are all thinking it......."I'm sure everyone has one of those!" :mrgreen:
Deano
@Deano: Why do you incinerate those aluminum capacitors? Do you hope to find any PMs in there? I strongly doubt it. They consist of aluminum and an acid (I think sulphuric acid ). Those capcitors are completly worthless. What you can do, if they are in a good condition and do have a rating like 50V,60V,100V and above: sell them on ebay. 10000 yF and 400V will sell at 10 € over here, Those are really large. It really would surprise me to have any PMs in there. Ok, who knows? Just check Wikipedia or so, you also put your health in danger. I liked your other smart projects better. Hope you dont get this wrong...
Coils consist of a ferrit core and a painted copper wire.. What is intersting about coils is the fact that IF they meet certain criteria (HF or high frequency coils, they contain RARE EARTH. It is the only component known to me that does really often contain rare earth. To know that, you must only read their color code. They are coded in certain colors depending on their content of Fe, Al and the famous rare earth (check wikipedia). So dont burn them - sorry incinerate-pyrolize-terminate them. You need to read the colors and go from there on. Most BMs are iron and aluminum. So with simple HCl you should be able to remove at least the iron, the rest could/should be the rare earth metals How much that is , is unknown to me. All I know is that since China controlled these elements for the last decade or so, they were able to get the rare earth metals reallly cheap from their own mines. Just to give you an example: In 2000 I had to pay 10€ for a HF coil that could withstand 20Amps in Germany. I researched and found one in china which costed me 0,10€/piece. So what that told me was, that the costs for the western countries to produce rare earth coils was much higher, because China sold them in small doses to "us" for enormous prices whereby their own chineese companies got supplied with this material at dumping levels (That is why so many mines had closed in the last years). Each and every CPU need HF coils to build a onboard voltage regulator, so they needed cheap HF coils to produce cheap motherboards.
Long story, but at the end of the day, I know nothing about rare earth how they can be detected, recovered and refined and what´s more, I never heard of any company actually buying rare earth metals. So this is an interesting niche, but probably fruitless...
Btw. those copperwires around the coils are covered with a transparent film, just in case you try to use them for precipitating and wonder why nothing is happening...
Marcel
Coils consist of a ferrit core and a painted copper wire.. What is intersting about coils is the fact that IF they meet certain criteria (HF or high frequency coils, they contain RARE EARTH. It is the only component known to me that does really often contain rare earth. To know that, you must only read their color code. They are coded in certain colors depending on their content of Fe, Al and the famous rare earth (check wikipedia). So dont burn them - sorry incinerate-pyrolize-terminate them. You need to read the colors and go from there on. Most BMs are iron and aluminum. So with simple HCl you should be able to remove at least the iron, the rest could/should be the rare earth metals How much that is , is unknown to me. All I know is that since China controlled these elements for the last decade or so, they were able to get the rare earth metals reallly cheap from their own mines. Just to give you an example: In 2000 I had to pay 10€ for a HF coil that could withstand 20Amps in Germany. I researched and found one in china which costed me 0,10€/piece. So what that told me was, that the costs for the western countries to produce rare earth coils was much higher, because China sold them in small doses to "us" for enormous prices whereby their own chineese companies got supplied with this material at dumping levels (That is why so many mines had closed in the last years). Each and every CPU need HF coils to build a onboard voltage regulator, so they needed cheap HF coils to produce cheap motherboards.
Long story, but at the end of the day, I know nothing about rare earth how they can be detected, recovered and refined and what´s more, I never heard of any company actually buying rare earth metals. So this is an interesting niche, but probably fruitless...
Btw. those copperwires around the coils are covered with a transparent film, just in case you try to use them for precipitating and wonder why nothing is happening...
Marcel
NoIdea
Well-known member
Evening All.
Marcel - I dont incinerate the electrolytic capacitors, i pyrolyze them, then put them in my smasher/basher/thrasher, it rattles out the carbon, knocks off the electrodes and leaves the foils intack inside the aluminium pot.
Smack - Check out wiki on composition of electrolytic capacitors.
Cheers
Deano
Marcel - I dont incinerate the electrolytic capacitors, i pyrolyze them, then put them in my smasher/basher/thrasher, it rattles out the carbon, knocks off the electrodes and leaves the foils intack inside the aluminium pot.
Smack - Check out wiki on composition of electrolytic capacitors.
Cheers
Deano
NoIdea said:
OK, I did:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolytic_capacitor
Cite:
Electrolytes may be toxic or corrosive. Working with the electrolyte requires safe working practice and appropriate protective equipment such as gloves and safety glasses. Some very old tantalum electrolytics, often called "Wet-slug", contain corrosive sulfuric acid; however, most of these are no longer in service due to corrosion.
(..)
There are a number of non-aqueous electrolytes, which use only a small amount of water. The electrolytes are generally composed of a weak acid, a salt of weak acid, and a solvent, and optional thickening agent and other additives. The electrolyte is usually soaked into an electrode separator. The weak acids are usually organic acid (glacial acetic acid, lactic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, crotonic acid, acrylic acid, phenol, cresol, etc.) or boric acid. The salts employed are often ammonium or metal salts of organic acids (ammonium acetate, ammonium citrate, aluminium acetate, calcium lactate, ammonium oxalate, etc.) or weak inorganic acids (sodium perborate, trisodium phosphate, etc.). Solvent-based electrolytes may be based on alkanolamines (monoethanolamine, diethanolamine, triethanolamine,...) or polyols (diethylene glycol, glycerol, etc.).[9]
As far as I can see, I was right about the sulfuric acid acid. I still dont get what you expect from them. I see no values there. Aluminum is very cheap and the amount is rather small.
I am really just trying to understand what values you are going after in here. The pyrolizing puts your health in danger - for what? Just a tryout? Am I just missing here something ? :roll:
PS: Please do not forget that electrolytic capacitors tend to explode when exposed to heat, which will evaporate toxic fumes and spread the acid out.
Also be aware that large capacitors - even if not in a circuitry - can still contain a large amount of energy, so if you touch them at the electrodes this current may unload and (this is no exaggeration) may cause very severe burns or can even cause death, exsp. if you carry a heartdevice or have a cardiac insufficency.
Capacitors which are not shortened will gather energy from the surrounding air and load themselfs over the time, even without beeing connected to an electrical source!
NoIdea
Well-known member
Hi Marcel – I appreciate your concerns.
Hmmm, how to get it from my head to paper???
Ok, Pyrolysis if done correctly, it will NOT release toxic fumes; it involves the distilling of organic compounds from an organic material placed in a vessel with only one escape route, which is usually fed into a burner, where it becomes the fuel to keep the pyrolysis process going, destroying anything toxic.
The value of the capacitors, hmmm, well I could put them in our land fill, at a cost to me and the environment, or I can recover the aluminium. I have chosen the later.
Greed is recycling’s worst enemy, if it can’t make a profit then it’s not recycled. Ba-Humbug, I would rather spend some of my profit (if their were such a thing) into recycling the non-profitable items than spend my profit paying disposal fees. Just Me.
Hmmm, how to get it from my head to paper???
Ok, Pyrolysis if done correctly, it will NOT release toxic fumes; it involves the distilling of organic compounds from an organic material placed in a vessel with only one escape route, which is usually fed into a burner, where it becomes the fuel to keep the pyrolysis process going, destroying anything toxic.
The value of the capacitors, hmmm, well I could put them in our land fill, at a cost to me and the environment, or I can recover the aluminium. I have chosen the later.
Greed is recycling’s worst enemy, if it can’t make a profit then it’s not recycled. Ba-Humbug, I would rather spend some of my profit (if their were such a thing) into recycling the non-profitable items than spend my profit paying disposal fees. Just Me.
NoIdea
Well-known member
Palladium said:
:lol: It was on our news, down under, last nite, how they made it etc. The inside of the plane was a prop because non of the real one's were available.
Deano
mjgraham
Well-known member
I was wondering how long it takes to get them completely incinerated? I have been working with a bunch of RAM chips there in a furnace burning charcoal with a blower, I can get them to a nice orange color for about 20-30 min then after it starts tapering off I pull the pan and they hit the water. What I notice is a lot of them are not incinerated much at all. I know if there stacked up that can cause a problem and it acts to me like once the white layer has formed it is an effective insulation but I am wondering if there needs to be more oxygen in there. I did a batch tonight single layer was in there almost and hour they look like chalk they hit the water there is still a chip there, most of the time it blows the die out but still a lot of the package is left. I am fairly sure heat should be good enough. I know I might have to repeat the process a time more but at this rate I am going to spend more money in charcoal than I get back. Just thinking about it, I don't think I have just let them cool down on their own from a glowing state, just read about putting them in water about the same time I was cranking up the furnace.. humm
Geo
Well-known member
try letting the charcoal burn completely out and keep the air on until the chips cool. the carbon is still converting to carbon dioxide and when you quench them, it stops the process. crush the black ones and run them through in a thin steel pan or a large food can.
mjgraham
Well-known member
Geo you were right, did much better. I measured the tempeture for fun, for 3min it was over 1800F, stayed over 1000F for 30 min the dropped pretty good, I pulled the lid of at around 500 and let to cool down, still had a few that didn't get all the way done but far less. First thing that comes to my mind is a can with the parts and some kind of slow turning (1 RPM) mixer but that makes things a little more complicated. Anyway that helped a lot and thanks.
mjgraham
Well-known member
I would say any would help, what I found I have a good blower, has a 2" outlet supplied tons of air, but I had to basically restrict it back to nearly nothing, I guess there can be too much air flow, sure the fire burns hot but you blow all the heat out the top. I think from what I saw in a video of Geo's he had a hair dryer adapted to a pipe, if you could get some of those high RPM server blowers that go in a 1U or something rack mount case, but I'd say just give it a try with what ever you got. After some tinkering I would say staying at temp for a longer time would be better than a really high temp for a short time but that may not be true.
mjgraham
Well-known member
OK I got all 5 pounds of memory chips incinerated, I just have a few questions, I have read the wonderful documentation by patnor1011, I am still curious about a few things. First I have separated the big from the medium and the dust in different buckets. In the dust bucket I removed all the magnetic pieces and tried to pan like in the documentation, first off I have no idea what I am doing plus I would imagine I would see something that looked like gold but not really. I decided to try to put a spoonful in a beaker and make some AR for it, put on HCl and dripped nitric until there is little reaction, filtered it off and tested and it was positive for gold. I guess my question, is this still what everyone is doing is panning the powder? Next what is a plan for dealing with the legs, other pieces I would imagine it is going to take a lot of acid to deal with pounds of material but I am young at this and advice would be helpful.
Thanks,
Thanks,
patnor1011
Well-known member
Well.
What I do is this. It will take a lot of time but this is just my way. It saves me couple of problems later. When I incinerate I do not crush with too much force. If properly incinerated water and fingers (use rubber gloves) is sufficient enough to break chips down. They are just like wet cookies and I try to remove as much of centre wafers as possible. They are like glass and when broken it is herd to pan them out without loosing some of your gold. When you do more chips like 5 pounds all you will see in bucket is black muddy water it is hard to spot gold initially. Not to mention that gold will sink to bottom - just like in river, you need to get to bedrock which is bottom of your bucket in this case. Lets say that you have one third of bucket full of ashes and non magnetic pins. Just fill bucket with water and use something to stir content. Wait 10-20 seconds and carefully pour off black water. Do this several times until you see that poured water is less and less black. In this way you will get rid of finest ash. What will remain in bucket will be more coarse pieces of incinerated ash and pins and gold. Fill with some water again and use spoon to mash this coarse powder a little bit. Fill with water, stir, pour off... After while you will see that probably half of content is gone and you can start using pan. I do have several pans so I just take say 2-3 hand full from bucket and start panning. Pins will tend to group together so you can take them out pinch by pinch and place to another pan, you will easier separate pins from gold.
Main thing is to do everything slow to prevent gold escaping. Most of gold or a lot of it are very fine specks and you will see them only when some if it accumulate on some spot in pan.
I would start using nitric when I get to about 5-10% (5 is better) of initial incinerated mass and even before that I try to remove as much of pins as possible.
I do save all pins in extra container, they will go to stock pot (there is small very small amount of gold plating on tip where bonding wire was attached and some of them may be silver or AgPd plated)
Main thing is to do it very slow and very carefully. I did lost some gold when I started doing this year ago - I was in a hurry to see gold.
What I do is this. It will take a lot of time but this is just my way. It saves me couple of problems later. When I incinerate I do not crush with too much force. If properly incinerated water and fingers (use rubber gloves) is sufficient enough to break chips down. They are just like wet cookies and I try to remove as much of centre wafers as possible. They are like glass and when broken it is herd to pan them out without loosing some of your gold. When you do more chips like 5 pounds all you will see in bucket is black muddy water it is hard to spot gold initially. Not to mention that gold will sink to bottom - just like in river, you need to get to bedrock which is bottom of your bucket in this case. Lets say that you have one third of bucket full of ashes and non magnetic pins. Just fill bucket with water and use something to stir content. Wait 10-20 seconds and carefully pour off black water. Do this several times until you see that poured water is less and less black. In this way you will get rid of finest ash. What will remain in bucket will be more coarse pieces of incinerated ash and pins and gold. Fill with some water again and use spoon to mash this coarse powder a little bit. Fill with water, stir, pour off... After while you will see that probably half of content is gone and you can start using pan. I do have several pans so I just take say 2-3 hand full from bucket and start panning. Pins will tend to group together so you can take them out pinch by pinch and place to another pan, you will easier separate pins from gold.
Main thing is to do everything slow to prevent gold escaping. Most of gold or a lot of it are very fine specks and you will see them only when some if it accumulate on some spot in pan.
I would start using nitric when I get to about 5-10% (5 is better) of initial incinerated mass and even before that I try to remove as much of pins as possible.
I do save all pins in extra container, they will go to stock pot (there is small very small amount of gold plating on tip where bonding wire was attached and some of them may be silver or AgPd plated)
Main thing is to do it very slow and very carefully. I did lost some gold when I started doing this year ago - I was in a hurry to see gold.
mjgraham
Well-known member
OK, sounds like a new plan, I do agree I was most likely eager to see anything, I will go back and try the water method of cleaning the pieces and try to remove as much wafer as I can. I'll let you know how it goes.
Thanks again.
Thanks again.
Geo
Well-known member
i processed alot of memory chips a short time ago and thought i washed the ash pretty good. i ran quite a bit of the ash mixture through boiling AR. i retrieved alot less gold than was expected. after reading through pats post on it many times trying to figure out where i went wrong.i took the ash that i saved from the AR and put it in a large cast iron pot. i placed that on my turkey fryer and covered it with a 5 gallon metal bucket with the bottom cut out to funnel the heat.the ash was black, after firing it for about thirty minutes on the propane burner, it was all white. i ran it through a blender with a little water. i ran it through AR again like it was without washing it afraid i would wash out the gold. after letting it settle for a few days in a tall slender glass container, the solution was deep yellow and heavy with gold.
the epoxy has to be incinerated completely. any black material will trap the tiny gold wires.
the epoxy has to be incinerated completely. any black material will trap the tiny gold wires.
mjgraham
Well-known member
It seems I have a lot of work yet to do, I have been using charcoal, need to try the turkey fryer.
