Gold inside chips (black, flatpacks - not CPU)

[solar_plasma]

panther

solar_plasma

This thought is directed your way since you have panning trouble with the flatpacks.

The light ashes that aren't sinking with 2 min are no problem. It was more the panning technique and after all I am pretty sure I didn't incinerate enough. But after I used AR instead of chlorox my yield was right.

 

[Pantherlikher]

My thought is as an alternative to panning... I'm sure I will take a long time to get it right...
Maybe with just the right breeze, it'll remove almost all crap and leave very little with gold.

 

[solar_plasma]

I have some sympathy for every concept which saves drinking water. Physically your method will work in theory, though I think it will be much work to realize it. Wet panning is probably easier to control. With a flow of air you will have to take care of a method to catch the aerosoles in a micro filter, while building the whole thing as a closed system. I could even imagine a combination of your method with the incineration of the already pyrolysed material which has to be grinded slightly in a screw continously...an air flow which both oxidizes the surface and at the same time takes away the light ashes. :lol:

Additionally some way of controlling where the gold is concentrating by some kind of imaging methods, would make it easier to adjust the whole thing. I am thinking of infrared, röntgen, röntgen flourescence and electromagnetic fields or a combination of those, combined and filtered by some software.

So,you will need a dozen masters of engineering and some millions of dollars.

All in all, this could be an invention worth to save the rights on it, but I don't believe it is worth the effort just to do some pounds.

 

[niteliteone]

I have some sympathy for every concept which saves drinking water. Physically your method will work in theory, though I think it will be much work to realize it. Wet panning is probably easier to control. With a flow of air you will have to take care of a method to catch the aerosoles in a micro filter, while building the whole thing as a closed system. I could even imagine a combination of your method with the incineration of the already pyrolysed material which has to be grinded slightly in a screw continously...an air flow which both oxidizes the surface and at the same time takes away the light ashes. :lol:

Additionally some way of controlling where the gold is concentrating by some kind of imaging methods, would make it easier to adjust the whole thing. I am thinking of infrared, röntgen, röntgen flourescence and electromagnetic fields or a combination of those, combined and filtered by some software.

So,you will need a dozen masters of engineering and some millions of dollars.

All in all, this could be an invention worth to save the rights on it, but I don't believe it is worth the effort just to do some pounds.

I think you would be just as happy if you used an old panners trick when dry panning in the desert. Just gently blow in the pan and shake it (the pan, not you) until you have all the light powders gone.

 

[g_axelsson]

solar_plasma

This thought is directed your way since you have panning trouble with the flatpacks.

Think wind for a moment.
A long white sheet of paper in front of a slow blowing fan.
Black incinerated powder slowly dropped in the wind path and allowed to slightly be blown along untill it hits the paper.

Gold being heavier, would it not be closer to the fan then alot of the other dust?

The idea being to concentrate gold and bigger pieces needing further crushing, seperation.

In my odd mind, it would rid most of the black powder as it moves further along with the wind from a fan.

To test, I will someday crush my pyrolized packs and empty the garage floor and start with a gentle breeze and look with the magnifying glass down the paper to see if it works, or just causes me to sanitize the garage.
When I empty the garage of course....I think there is a floor there somewhere.

B.S.
Idea? or no?

Not a good idea!

There is a reason people doesn't dry pan when they have any access to water.
- Powder easily stick together when dry, water breaks that static bond and makes it easier to separate the gold from the dust.
- As water is heavier than air it is better to separate material based on density.
- The dust that would be blown away is easily suspended in water and just poured off.

If you have problem learning to pan, use a larger vessel to catch the material you pan off, then you can pan it again as many times it takes. Stop when you doesn't find any more gold in your pan.

Göran

 

[Pantherlikher]

g_axelsson

Makes the most sense to not do it although all are good reasons why not.
I was thinking only about the density of different materials. Different areas will cause different effects so really not a great idea especially as Solar explains. You will create dangerous dust particles.

A closed system as described would be needed which would be way to over-engineering as he explained.

Thanks for shooting it down before I experimented and caused possible harm.

B.S.

 

[chlaurite]

I think you would be just as happy if you used an old panners trick when dry panning in the desert. Just gently blow in the pan and shake it (the pan, not you) until you have all the light powders gone.

I always thought dry panning only worked on significantly larger particles - Medium-sized flake at the smallest, with virtually all dust and even smaller flakes lost?

It seems this would matter for recovery from incinerated (or milled) flat packs, since most of the gold therein counts as dust at best.

 

[niteliteone]

I think you would be just as happy if you used an old panners trick when dry panning in the desert. Just gently blow in the pan and shake it (the pan, not you) until you have all the light powders gone.

I always thought dry panning only worked on significantly larger particles - Medium-sized flake at the smallest, with virtually all dust and even smaller flakes lost?

It seems this would matter for recovery from incinerated (or milled) flat packs, since most of the gold therein counts as dust at best.

Gold panning is a density separation method and I do believe the density of gold is greater than anything else that would be in the bowl.
By classifying the material properly, then only applying the breeze necessary to remove the lighter material a patient person could get a 99+% recovery of the gold with little to no loss.

PS. What common IC's, spoken of in this thread, do you know of that has gold plated (flakes) anything inside :?:

 

[chlaurite]

PS. What common IC's, spoken of in this thread, do you know of that has gold plated (flakes) anything inside :?:

I mean that as a reference to the common sizes of gold you get from panning. In order of decreasing size: nuggets, flakes, then dust.

Don't think of this in terms of micron-thin foils peeling off gold fingers... "Flakes" actually means some relatively large chunks - Think "bigger than a pinhead", with nuggets bigger than a BB.

The gold we get from inside ICs comes purely from the bonding wires - Literally one-tenth the thickness of a human hair. They barely even qualify as "dust" from the traditional panning perspective.

 

[niteliteone]

I would think those "round" (aerodynamic) wires with a density of more than 15 times that of the ash would stay in the pan, like they do every time I have done this :shock:
I guess my proven results have been wrong all this time :roll:

PS. I started this dry panning process back in 1996 and it still works perfectly every time I do it.

edit to add;
I should add that I have since replaced this Dry Panning, by using my blue bowl that I bought 2 months ago. It's a lot easier on the lungs as I suffer with COPD

 

[patnor1011]

I live in pretty windy area so some days when I use sieve to catch Si wafers or pins very light dust do not make it in bucket again.

 

[jays_computers]

Using the forums and videos I've been trying a few different ways to incinerate the chips. After trial and error I found this setup works good for me at my level. And it's cheap and simple. There's nothing new about it but I thought it would help to have some good pictures and explanations for the total noob like myself

Basically I just used firebricks, charcoal briquets, a 22oz/625g dog food can with holes drilled in it and a hair dryer. I also mixed in small amounts of regular coal once it got going. I could fill the dog food can a little more than half way with chips and have them all get glowing red hot for as long as needed, about 10 minutes. I would have to add 3 or 4 charcoal briquets after each batch. The can started melting after 3 or 4 runs.

I'm just doing a practice run using low grade chips. If you see any flaws or something please let me know. Thanks!

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Not a good idea to be operating that inside an enclosed space.

Dave

 

[ericrm]

how do you deal with the fumes?

 

[jays_computers]

Thanks, I did this outside, the table has wheels so I pulled it in a little for some pictures. The garage is more of an open long house. In hind sight perhaps I will retake some photos outside so as to not mislead a novice into thinking they could do this in their garage. As for fumes the wind carries them south. We have no neighbors for at least a quarter mile.

 

[JHS]

I know I will be shot down for this.Would it be possible after incineration is complete to then put
the ashes in a crucible and melt the gold to the bottom .
Then let the crucible cool,dump the ash and remelt the gold and pour to cornflake?
My first thought is you would need to have a large crucible and a lot of ash to make it
worth while.
john

 

[4metals]

The overall percentage of precious metals to other metals will be low, you will likely end up with a high copper alloy.

In the days that I incinerated this material (commercially on a small scale) we ended up with 2 fractions, a pulp which was the burnt powder which was crushed and sifted and shipped off to have any values recovered from a major sweeps refiner. The metallics, which is the part you were inquiring about, were melted with copper and shipped to a copper refiner. Our trays held about 500 pounds and we had enough volume to run 2 to 3 burns a week (that is why I said small scale, in the scheme of things that is relatively small scale)

If I were doing this on a very small home refining scale, I would melt a few lots with copper and have them assayed for PM's. Then, depending on the assay and how much I could get of this type of material, I would set up a small electrolytic copper refinery and collect the values in the slimes.

With copper at $3 a pound and a decent supply it could be cost effective.

 

[Geo]

if you were going to use a collector for the gold, wouldnt silver do just as good a job for small lots (a home refiner)? the silver could be used over and over again.

 

[patnor1011]

Copper is cheaper and besides there will be quite a lot of copper there already in form of pins.

 

[solar_plasma]

With copper at $3 a pound and a decent supply it could be cost effective.

...only 3$ in the US? Here it is at 4,5-5,5 €.


edit: oh I see, you said POUNDS, I thought of kg