Gold Pin Refining - Solid Gold? Unexpexted Results. Help?

[orvi]

A video on strips if they are gold plated may contain 1-2 percent gold. This is from strips. Interesting but you will prob not get a lot of gold. Streeps took 4760 g of gold pins and got 23 g gold out of it.

Above 4-5g/kg pins I consider relatively good recovery worth chasing, even with AR (if they are soldered and you cannot get full recovery with cyanide or sulfuric cell). Altough I much more like to process higher grade pins, like more than 10g/kg - less waste per ammount of gold recovered. And top scrap for me are ceramic ICs and CPUs. Little metal = little waste, purer crude gold solutions

 

[Daniel0007a]

Yes CPU could be heated in a Propane stove or a Kilm to drive off plastic and CO2 giving you Pure gold. Or you could break the CPU open and remove the gold from the CPU. However many CPU will have Only 100-300 mg of gold inside. An older CPU from the 1990 may be better in recovering gold.

 

[orvi]

Yes CPU could be heated in a Propane stove or a Kilm to drive off plastic and CO2 giving you Pure gold. Or you could break the CPU open and remove the gold from the CPU. However many CPU will have Only 100-300 mg of gold inside. An older CPU from the 1990 may be better in recovering gold.

There is not much in modern fiber CPUs, so processing on small 1kg scale isn´t very appealing to me. But if you are doing stuff like 386/486/MMX/etc. then it could be very interesting since reasons I enumerate above.
Not very much CPUs have more than 300mg gold per unit. Most frequent one, which is Pentium, has average 2g/kg (no gold lid or bottom). But when you imagine how much metal it contain, it is very economical to process CPUs rather than pins in AR.

 

[Daniel0007a]

Since a cpu gold woud be very expensive for a 386 or 486 Processor it may be worth collecting it or a gold bar and extracting it for gold purposes. Poorman chem took an Canadian coin made of Pd (Palladium) and made Pd black and Palladium ammonia chloride Pd(NH4)2Cl2.

 

[Daniel0007a]

I mean 2 g of gold per cpu if you can get a lot of them it def worth it.

 

[orvi]

Since a cpu gold woud be very expensive for a 386 or 486 Processor it may be worth collecting it or a gold bar and extracting it for gold purposes. Poorman chem took an Canadian coin made of Pd (Palladium) and made Pd black and Palladium ammonia chloride Pd(NH4)2Cl2.

Depends. Time to time, I purchase quite a bit of CPUs despite they has collectors value. But I do not have time to sell it piece by piece on eBay or various other marketplaces. So I process them instead. I am oriented to make profit from it, so I do not know what "gold purposes" are, but my purpose of gold is to sell it

I mean 2 g of gold per cpu if you can get a lot of them it def worth it.

Never seen a CPU that gave 2g per unit. I wrote 2g per kg of Pentiums.

 

[Daniel0007a]

If the pins have lead in them you can add to AR a few drops of conc 98 percent Sulfuric acid to make Lead Sulfate. It will form with Sulfuric acid and AR a soluble lead salt. You can remove lead from the gold this way.

If not hot the Aqua regas and sulfuric acid will dissolve the lead leaving gold alone.

 

[Daniel0007a]

Useful to purify gold and copper.

 

[jphayesjr]

Be is both acutely toxic and carcinogenic/teratogenic. Don't get salts or solutions on your skin, eyes, mouth. Don't inhale beryllium containing powders. And yes, once bonded where magnesium interfaces in body, it is in place permanently. Modern medicine has not found a way to chelate it and remove from the human body. A friend of mine who built bespoken custom ultralight bicycle frames with Sandvik Be-Al tubing learned the hard way many moons ago. Irreversible pulmonary edema is a hideous way to check-out of this life. Retail prices for 99.999% pure Be chunks run from USD $5 to $8 per gram. Demand from aerospace and telecom and digital equipment industries are growing rapidly. It is feasible to recycle it, just challenging to do it safely. DO NOT ATTMPT TO MELT unless you have a hood with neutral gas capability, and capability to clean up and contain the dust. If you dissolve BE-Cu alloy chemically, you'll eventually precipitate it as a salt-- if you accumulate it, keep it in a wet condition, covered by several centimeters of water in a closed securely sealed vessel. Safely discard other filtrates and liquids. Unless you're mad as a hatter, why would you want to turn your place into a superfund site?
Here's a YouTube link from the UK you may find helpful from someone who avoided becoming a berylliosis victim... NB PEr EU criteria, beryllium is a Class 1 carcinogen.

I have personal experience with berylium based minerals myself, having worked a lot with various types of beryls for gemological purposes...I do not cut it in my studio anymore. When I find it during prospecting jaunts, I grade it, and accumulate or immediately sell either as ore or as cabbing/faceting rough. My friend's demise was a wake-up call for us all.

 

[jphayesjr]

Gotta be REAL careful with beryllium salts. They're extremely toxic, similar in toxicity to arsenic! 4mg is enough to be considered an immediate health danger!

Like, if you are working with beryllium or its' alloys, it's a good idea to wear a faceplate respirator with two stage filtering (activated charcoal and sintered wafers) that traps particles down to 0.5 microns...Binks Corp. used to make them. I think someone else bought the brand, so check NIOSH. Someone out there is bound to say I'm being picky and sissyish. Read my other reply above. Even a few mg of beryllium powder circulating in the air of your lab is a clear and present hazard. Even clipping beryllium wire causes shedding of burrs. It is insidious.

 

[Alondro]

Depends. Time to time, I purchase quite a bit of CPUs despite they has collectors value. But I do not have time to sell it piece by piece on eBay or various other marketplaces. So I process them instead. I am oriented to make profit from it, so I do not know what "gold purposes" are, but my purpose of gold is to sell it

Never seen a CPU that gave 2g per unit. I wrote 2g per kg of Pentiums.

There's one type of ceramic Pentium Pro that has over 1 gram of gold per processor. But those are not very common.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

There's one type of ceramic Pentium Pro that has over 1 gram of gold per processor. But those are not very common.

I have read that ever since I joined this forum, but I've never seen a member say they actually had that result.

Are you saying you've actually refined them, or is that information from one of the infamous lists?

Dave

 

[Alondro]

I have read that ever since I joined this forum, but I've never seen a member say they actually had that result.

Are you saying you've actually refined them, or is that information from one of the infamous lists?

Dave

I haven't found one to refine myself. I only know a guy who did and confirmed it was about a gram. Even so, I wouldn't pay the absurdly high prices people usually want for them. What's the point of paying virtually the amount of the gold value inside them? If I found them cheap, well yeah I'd grab them!

For a hobbyist who's just doing it for fun, that's fine. But to make money, they're a fool's errand. There aren't that many of them, and they're always priced too high.

Basically, if you buy a big lot of stuff for a reasonable price, and find a few of the Holy Grail of CPUs mixed in, it makes your day. Basically like finding a quarter in a jar you thought was just full of pennies.

 

[jphayesjr]

Be is both acutely toxic and carcinogenic/teratogenic. Don't get salts or solutions on your skin, eyes, mouth. Don't inhale beryllium containing powders. And yes, once bonded where magnesium interfaces in body, it is in place permanently. Modern medicine has not found a way to chelate it and remove from the human body. A friend of mine who built bespoken custom ultralight bicycle frames with Sandvik Be-Al tubing learned the hard way many moons ago. Irreversible pulmonary edema is a hideous way to check-out of this life. Retail prices for 99.999% pure Be chunks run from USD $5 to $8 per gram. Demand from aerospace and telecom and digital equipment industries are growing rapidly. It is feasible to recycle it, just challenging to do it safely. DO NOT ATTMPT TO MELT unless you have a hood with neutral gas capability, and capability to clean up and contain the dust. If you dissolve BE-Cu alloy chemically, you'll eventually precipitate it as a salt-- if you accumulate it, keep it in a wet condition, covered by several centimeters of water in a closed securely sealed vessel. Safely discard other filtrates and liquids. Unless you're mad as a hatter, why would you want to turn your place into a superfund site?
Here's a YouTube link from the UK you may find helpful from someone who avoided becoming a berylliosis victim... NB PEr EU criteria, beryllium is a Class 1 carcinogen.

I have personal experience with berylium based minerals myself, having worked a lot with various types of beryls for gemological purposes...I do not cut it in my studio anymore. When I find it during prospecting jaunts, I grade it, and accumulate or immediately sell either as ore or as cabbing/faceting rough. My friend's demise was a wake-up call for us all.

If members are looking for a reasonable and competent source for PPE, may I call to your attention https://www.galeton.com ? I do not work for them, nor receive any benefit. They have excellent items and helpful sales and deals.

 

[Soar2c]

I have read that ever since I joined this forum, but I've never seen a member say they actually had that result.

Are you saying you've actually refined them, or is that information from one of the infamous lists?

Dave

Here's a trust worthy list created by a very reliable source. If it has anything to do with electronic scrap this guy is an amazing source of information. In this video he goes through his top 15 list of CPU's and what he's recovered on average when doing processing them. He lists 2 Pentium's - one of them is ceramic with a gold cap, and one of them is plastic with an a black aluminum heat sink cap. He lists these in his number 2&1 spots for gold recovery at 0.48g and 0.55g respectfully. Check him out. (you can forward to 12:58s if you wish) . ~Kyle

 

[BlackLabel]

I'm subscribed to eWaste Bens channel.
I like when he's scrapping exotic devices.
He is scrapping a lot of PCs from 8080 to nearly actual models. He knows a lot but there are some glitches.
I doubt, he did worked all these CPUs and gathered the gold by himself. I've never seen a gold recovery video from him.

 

[chrundle_the_great]

All,
I should first say thank you to the members here. There really is some great info here for new hobbyist like myself.
I recently started processing some scrap connectors that have gold pins. To date, I've processed a few different materials all in the hopes of having a lot of foils ready to go. That way I can do batches of aqua regia all at the same time.
I've stripped some gold plated shields as well a handful of PCBs. They both had one thing in common- when placed in AP, there is a near immediate reaction.
Yesterday, I did a test by putting 20 or so pins in an AP solution. It was odd because nothing happened. I told myself to be patient and check it again 24 hrs later to see if there was a change. I checked the pins again this morning- again, no reaction at all. I've left those pins still in AP and will give them a week and will check once again.
Given what I found, I figured I would try melting some pins in a spare small crucible I bought and haven't used used. I took about 20 or so pins (shame on me for not documenting a measuring!) and I stated to apply some heat with a MAP torch. It took a bit, but the pins started to combine. Eventually, I had a red hot BB moving around in the crucible.
I dropped it into some water and found it came out more of a copper color than gold, so I put it back in the crucible and heated it again until it was a BB. I added a little flux and it seems like it separated impurities. I did this whole process 2 more times to try and see if I could get a more pure gold colored BB. It weighs .3g
I drenched it again and washed it with water. I decided to drop the nugget into some AP to see if anything happened. Again, nothing.
Now I'm baffled. I've attached a picture of what the pins look like next to the melted metal. It still looks a little dirty, but is it possible this is a nugget of gold?
I've not bought sulfuric yet because of what I noted below about wanting to have a lot of processed foils ready. I know that I could see if this is gold by trying to dissolve it into a solution. I also don't have what I need to do a stannous test.
I'd appreciate opinions

I did the same thing, I tested my button and it was around 14k the ones I didn't melt I topped the solution with fresh HCI and the pins started to dissolve. Now, I'm doing another batch with some new flat pins added and they're not reacting at all but everything else is. I'm guessing it's just a thicker plating?

 

[Yggdrasil]

I did the same thing, I tested my button and it was around 14k the ones I didn't melt I topped the solution with fresh HCI and the pins started to dissolve. Now, I'm doing another batch with some new flat pins added and they're not reacting at all but everything else is. I'm guessing it's just a thicker plating?

If you melt a button from pins you will end up with a very low concentration of Gold and mostly Copper or Kovar depending on what the structure of the pins are made of. Kovar is something that is quite hard to dissolve.
If you do so you will have to dissolve the whole button to liberate the Gold as a fine powder.
If you keep adding flux you can clean up the surface of the button but not much of the alloy.
How do you test it?

 

[chrundle_the_great]

If you melt a button from pins you will end up with a very low concentration of Gold and mostly Copper or Kovar depending on what the structure of the pins are made of. Kovar is something that is quite hard to dissolve.
If you do so you will have to dissolve the whole button to liberate the Gold as a fine powder.
If you keep adding flux you can clean up the surface of the button but not much of the alloy.
How do you test it?

With a jewelers acid kit

 

[Yggdrasil]

With a jewelers acid kit

Ok.
On this kind of beads that can be quite misleading.
If you hit a high Gold spot it will skew the result.

How much pins and what kind was smelted?