Gold yields in mixed chips (complete process)

[Tzoax]

Greetings. I collected some amount of chips mainly from RAM sticks, PCI cards and graphics and I am planning to process them together and see how much gold I will get, on the first image I have 240.6 grams of RAM chips, on second image 936.8 grams of mixed chips, on third 46.8 grams of high yield GPU chips (only the cap of chips, the bottom part was removed and I will process it separately). All together there is 1224.2 grams of chips. I am planning to incinerate them and process them all together, I will incinerate them in sunday with coal, i will post pictures of every step i do. Any tip or opinion is welcome.

 

[maynman1751]

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827

 

[Tzoax]

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827

Thank You for the link Maynman, I will try to do as much as I can like that is described, this is my first time processing chips, I hope I wouldn't get into unaspected problems. First I am planning to incinerate chips in coal well, and mix all with water, remove unburned parts and process it again until I made a dust of all plastic.

 

[dannlee]

I'm been persuaded by experience that any/all solder should be separated before further processing - you'll be handling, sifting and sorting the ashes and do not need traces of lead broadcast at the incinerator, work station, water separation stages. Between the hazards of lead, and tins colloidal gels cluttering up processing, it should be worth taking some extra time before your Sunday burn.

After my first reclamation I changed from depopulating with heat to cutting IC legs where possible - then carefully lifting legless ICs using a heat gun and using towel to wipe molten solder clear of each high-value chip.

I just took 455 grams of SDRAM memory chips I'd oven / heat gunned process off their cards and soaked them in warm dilute HCl overnight, about half of the magnetic legs vanished along with the solder. The modern 'no-clean' fluxes used during assembly leaves a wax film that resists speedy cleaning of tin from conductors and lead/tin alloy solder, pre-washing chips with a solvent like carburetor or brake cleaner to chase off the waxes will halve or better the soak time required in HCl.

To avoid an extra acid step - A sharp wood chisel will zip down the chip leg rows with a very satisfying zipper sound and goes faster than you'd think.

 

[Tzoax]

I'm been persuaded by experience that any/all solder should be separated before further processing - you'll be handling, sifting and sorting the ashes and do not need traces of lead broadcast at the incinerator, work station, water separation stages. Between the hazards of lead, and tins colloidal gels cluttering up processing, it should be worth taking some extra time before your Sunday burn.

After my first reclamation I changed from depopulating with heat to cutting IC legs where possible - then carefully lifting legless ICs using a heat gun and using towel to wipe molten solder clear of each high-value chip.

I just took 455 grams of SDRAM memory chips I'd oven / heat gunned process off their cards and soaked them in warm dilute HCl overnight, about half of the magnetic legs vanished along with the solder. The modern 'no-clean' fluxes used during assembly leaves a wax film that resists speedy cleaning of tin from conductors and lead/tin alloy solder, pre-washing chips with a solvent like carburetor or brake cleaner to chase off the waxes will halve or better the soak time required in HCl.

To avoid an extra acid step - A sharp wood chisel will zip down the chip leg rows with a very satisfying zipper sound and goes faster than you'd think.

Thank You very much Dannlee for advice and for sharing knowledge, I will cut the legs of all chips with chisel before Sunday.

 

[joubjonn]

My process would be to do the black top BGA chips seperate. The chips with legs you can incinerate then use a magnet to collect the legs. I wouldn't bring acid into the mix until after they are ashed and the mag pieces are separated. Look for patnor's guide on this. Send him $5 paypal, it's worth it!

 

[Tzoax]

My process would be to do the black top BGA chips seperate. The chips with legs you can incinerate then use a magnet to collect the legs. I wouldn't bring acid into the mix until after they are ashed and the mag pieces are separated. Look for patnor's guide on this. Send him $5 paypal, it's worth it!

Thanks Joubjonn.

 

[Tzoax]

I tried to separate the legs manually, but it is much time consuming, tomorrow I'm gonna have to incinerate them with legs. I found a tutorial for extracting gold without water on this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZganYmR0-w

Does anybody know which way is better- purifying incinerated chips with water or directly processing the dust in aqua regia?

 

[patnor1011]

I tried to separate the legs manually, but it is much time consuming, tomorrow I'm gonna have to incinerate them with legs. I found a tutorial for extracting gold without water on this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZganYmR0-w

Does anybody know which way is better- purifying incinerated chips with water or directly processing the dust in aqua regia?

And this is example of what you do wrong.
You do not listen friendly advice, you just think you know it better. Good luck with your processing. If you would take enough time of going through my post and few others posts on this subject you would not need ask any questions.

I will tell you what will happen just to show what you could be asking in next few days.
If you do not incinerate enough your glass jar for crushing will not work.
If you incinerate too much you will be plagued with tons of small beads made of those legs (you do not have time to cut off or dissolve)and solder. They will foul your AR an made your recovery harder.
AR on burned material is not recommended as this carbon powder will steal some of your gold which you probably will not be able to recover.

Gold recovery is about patience. If you do not have patience to go through process as required you will never achieve good results.
Not to mention that you are trying to reinvent wheel, there are countless pages debating what you are trying to do, you will be better off to read for a few days instead of rushing with experiments.

 

[Tzoax]

I tried to separate the legs manually, but it is much time consuming, tomorrow I'm gonna have to incinerate them with legs. I found a tutorial for extracting gold without water on this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZganYmR0-w

Does anybody know which way is better- purifying incinerated chips with water or directly processing the dust in aqua regia?

And this is example of what you do wrong.
You do not listen friendly advice, you just think you know it better. Good luck with your processing. If you would take enough time of going through my post and few others posts on this subject you would not need ask any questions.

I will tell you what will happen just to show what you could be asking in next few days.
If you do not incinerate enough your glass jar for crushing will not work.
If you incinerate too much you will be plagued with tons of small beads made of those legs (you do not have time to cut off or dissolve)and solder. They will foul your AR an made your recovery harder.
AR on burned material is not recommended as this carbon powder will steal some of your gold which you probably will not be able to recover.

Gold recovery is about patience. If you do not have patience to go through process as required you will never achieve good results.
Not to mention that you are trying to reinvent wheel, there are countless pages debating what you are trying to do, you will be better off to read for a few days instead of rushing with experiments.

Thank You Patnor. I am very patient, when I was younger I had a hobby making a big houses of cards, with several card packs. It is not about that. I tried to cut the wires manually and it takes me about 10 seconds per chip, so for 2000 chips I have to work 5-6 hours. So I thought there must be a better way for that, and then I found that link I posted where the man incinerated the chips with legs and then in combination with sieve and magnet he removed all wires. I mean, even if there is some loss of gold, does it worth for 5-6 hours of work? I don't know, maybe the losses are much greater than I think.
Anyway, if I find that the chips are worth of processing I will be very happy since I can get them for almost free. I didn't know that they contains gold so I was throwing them in trash along with cards that I scrapped from fingers and pins. I collected 5 kilograms of ceramic cpus that are waiting me to process them, and MLCCs, silver, palladium, ruthenium, platinum, rhodium....there is so much to learn for me. But I am learning every day, still it's like a hobby, but maybe one day I could earn a lot of it and refine metals on a grater scale and make a business of it. Fortunately, I live in a country where refining centre for e-waste not exist, or is in early development. Next, it is very cheap and there is a tons of pc-scrap. And people are not knowing what there are selling, for example I bought several days ago a huge Maxtor hard disk from 1985 for about 2 euros, thats antiquity and is worth a lot more. I am paying ceramic cpus for about 0.86e, 1 piece of motherboard for 1.3e, kilogram of graphic cards and PCI cards (without metals and heatsinks) 2.15e, RAM memories for 8.64e per kilogram and so on. I do this tests to calculate is it worth processing it at all considering how much i am paying, and if I show to my self that there is a decent amount of metals to pay off, and if I show my self that I am capable to extract it, I will dedicate my self more to buying a larger amounts of e-scrap. Also, I am experimenting which components are best paying off.

 

[Tzoax]

I was working all day, about 12 hours with my friend and there was a couple of things that was slowing us but i managed to completly process 1/4 of all amount. The rest will be over in day or two. We incinerated the chips (with pins together), then crush with hammer, then sieve, and then washing with water. I asked one refiner that I personally know and he said that it can all go directly in aqua regia. The liquid will be black, but the process is the same. He said that tin will disolve in aqua regia in solution, and with SMB will drop only gold. Does anybody have some experience with this?
Here is some pictures of today.

 

[patnor1011]

I was working all day, about 12 hours with my friend and there was a couple of things that was slowing us but i managed to completly process 1/4 of all amount. The rest will be over in day or two. We incinerated the chips (with pins together), then crush with hammer, then sieve, and then washing with water. I asked one refiner that I personally know and he said that it can all go directly in aqua regia. The liquid will be black, but the process is the same. He said that tin will disolve in aqua regia in solution, and with SMB will drop only gold. Does anybody have some experience with this?
Here is some pictures of today.

Yes.
:arrow: http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827

 

[Tzoax]

I was working all day, about 12 hours with my friend and there was a couple of things that was slowing us but i managed to completly process 1/4 of all amount. The rest will be over in day or two. We incinerated the chips (with pins together), then crush with hammer, then sieve, and then washing with water. I asked one refiner that I personally know and he said that it can all go directly in aqua regia. The liquid will be black, but the process is the same. He said that tin will disolve in aqua regia in solution, and with SMB will drop only gold. Does anybody have some experience with this?
Here is some pictures of today.

Yes.
:arrow: http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827

Thank You Patnor. There are some pictures taken with microscope. I managed by panning to extract small sample of how it looks like. I guess that other metal is tin so I think that it would best to boil in HCl, then decant, then aqua regia.

 

[Tzoax]

I treated this small sample in aqua regia, here is the picture. I will add smb and I will wait until tomorrow to see will it drop the gold.

 

[dannlee]

The mirror-bright grit seen in the magnified photos is shattered silicon 'glass' chips from each integrated circuit device - they have semi-metallic properties for the electrical qualities.

There will also be silver solder and other high reliability brazes caught in the 'heavy' grit layers...

 

[Tzoax]

The mirror-bright grit seen in the magnified photos is shattered silicon 'glass' chips from each integrated circuit device - they have semi-metallic properties for the electrical qualities.

There will also be silver solder and other high reliability brazes caught in the 'heavy' grit layers...

Thanks Dannlee, I totally forgot that there are shattered silicon chips. Is it a good practice to crush them all together with chips or to separate them and process them separatelly? I tried to remove them from RAM chips but they were very soft. Also, if You can answer me - is it possible to recover gold from incinerated and crushed chips (and removed iron with magnet) by processing it (with full volume- no panning) with aqua regua? I know that there would be need for lot of acids, but I was just wondering is it possible.

 

[dannlee]

I honestly can not tell you if going straight to Aqua Regia is possible as a commercial scale process - all indications appear doing so is 'other-than-wise'.

I have to say I am a beginner but have a few of my own ideas on flatpack incineration -- review my first run at http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=20179. Within the glass chip itself there is no recoverable values, but they are not porous and will not absorb dissolved gold values away and hide them much, where I did find paying returns was in the magnetic legs.

EDIT: grammar, wrong link & and forgot to mention components should be completely ashed to light grey, if finding black char reheat those pieces. The light grey is the binder and glass dust filler. See http://focus.ti.com/en/download/qlty/SEMICONDUCTOR_PACKAGING_ASSEMBLY_TECHNOLOGY-MISC.pdf for more insights to the 'package' contents.

 

[patnor1011]

I mentioned it many times. Too many that I really do not want to do it again.
I absolutely do not recommend AR on incinerated material. Proper separation and water wash is a must.
People still try to fight with notion that recovery is about patience.
You think you are going to save time by going straight to AR only to waste much more time trying to wash AR with values from powdered ash and carbon. You will spend hours washing dissolved values from the same ash you could easily remove with just water.
Whoever like to waste money and time can go to straight AR.
Smart person will do his work in proper fashion reducing costs and maximizing values.

This process is for backyard refiner and big boys use completely different. For that one we lack equipment and we will never have it or replicate it unless investing hundreds of thousands.
And again, it is all there in my thread, many discussion on exactly the same questions you are asking. If you were reading it you would know.

 

[Anonymous]

Although Patnor needs absolutely no support from me I'm still going to give it.

I despair reading about people recommending the over complication of a process and making work for themselves later on. Work that could be avoided very easily.

 

[Tzoax]

I honestly can not tell you if going straight to Aqua Regia is possible as a commercial scale process - all indications appear doing so is 'other-than-wise'.

I have to say I am a beginner but have a few of my own ideas on flatpack incineration -- review my first run at http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=20179. Within the glass chip itself there is no recoverable values, but they are not porous and will not absorb dissolved gold values away and hide them much, where I did find paying returns was in the magnetic legs.

EDIT: grammar, wrong link & and forgot to mention components should be completely ashed to light grey, if finding black char reheat those pieces. The light grey is the binder and glass dust filler. See http://focus.ti.com/en/download/qlty/SEMICONDUCTOR_PACKAGING_ASSEMBLY_TECHNOLOGY-MISC.pdf for more insights to the 'package' contents.

Thank You Dannlee, I read Youre post, very interesting. And thank You for the link, this is my first time dealing with chips, I made a mistakes but I am sure next time will bi much better. I am looking on my little experiment here like getting familiar with chips, every practicing and testing with them and making mistakes only improves knowledge and experience. So, tomorrow and day or two after tomorrow I will bring to the end this work. Tomorrow after 16h from now I will see will I get the gold powder in my AR solution. If there is a powder, I will process the all the chip powder I have that way, about 1.2 kilos. And I will see what I will get that way. The next time I work with chips I will implement all the things and good advices from You guys, thank You again. There is one thing bothers me with this topic that I can't find anywhere. How to extract the gold wires from the crashed chip powder in water? I tried by panning but so much material is left. Maybe it is because I didn't incinerated to white red, or maybe I have to crush a dust a bit more? I managed this by removing with spoon a top part of material (leaving gold wires at bottom) but this way there is so much to work, do You know some simplest method?