Greenish precpitate in AR

[anachronism]

My view...

Do the acids react with the ceramic to make it possible for it to absorb values ?

Ha! There's a Pandora's box you could open right now mate.

 

[nickvc]

My view...

Do the acids react with the ceramic to make it possible for it to absorb values ?

Ha! There's a Pandora's box you could open right now mate.

Well it's always good to open up a debate on whether members are getting all the values they could from their hard won or paid for scrap :shock:

 

[Roj]

Hello everyone so after long 2 weeks filtering and decanting. Finally results are about 35 gram of pure gold . It's was fun experience but I don't think it was worth the time and effort I put In it .now that been said I have no idea and can accurately assume it was the gold wires inside the ceramics or or was it the left over gold traces all over the 150lbs . But one thing for sure I will not be doing this again :mrgreen: . But it was fun experience.

 

[Roj]

Also I am sure there is still gold left . Because it's almost impossible to get all the value from pulverised ceramic powder.specially the tungsten powder it's horrible to rinse .

 

[anachronism]

Hang on Roj. Do I read this right? You got 35g of gold from 150 pounds of pre processed processors that you ground up?

Jon

 

[4metals]

Let me summarize what I think was said here.

35 grams recovered = 35/31.103= 1.125 T.O.

150 lbs x 14.583 = 2,187.45 T.O. starting weight

1.125 T.O. / 2,187.45 T.O. = 0.00051 troy oz per [stt]pound[/stt] whoops :mrgreen: Troy oz

or; [stt]0.00000514[/stt] % yield. double whoops :mrgreen: :mrgreen: .0514%

Not trash but not a candidate for aqua regia.

 

[g_axelsson]

Let me summarize what I think was said here.

35 grams recovered = 35/31.103= 1.125 T.O.

150 lbs x 14.583 = 2,187.45 T.O. starting weight

1.125 T.O. / 2,187.45 T.O. = 0.00051 troy oz per pound

or; 0.00000514 % yield.

Not trash but not a candidate for aqua regia.

Your numbers are not reasonable, 4metals... as I prefer metric I'll ignore the troys...
0.00000514% = 0.0514 grams per ton. He got 35g from 0.075 ton.

You went the wrong way when going to percent and mixed up the units.

1.125 T.O. / 2,187.45 T.O. = 0.00051 troy oz gold per troy oz feed stock
= 0.051 % yield

This must be the first time I have corrected you. :wink:

Göran

 

[4metals]

Hmm so much for air math, next time I break out the calculator.

the 14.583 is to convert avoirdupois pounds to troy ounces but you are correct, metric is way better.

 

[Roj]

Hang on Roj. Do I read this right? You got 35g of gold from 150 pounds of pre processed processors that you ground up?

Jon

Thats right .

 

[Roj]

Filtering stages . Nightmare lol

 

[anachronism]

Thanks Roj. Frankly I'm impressed.

There's ways to improve that filtering process but given you paid $2 per pound, if you can reduce the time taken and improve efficiency then I think it's a worthwhile venture. Especially if you have multiple jobs going at the same time. What do you think of it on that basis?

I'd also be interested to see what silver you got.

Jon

 

[kurtak]

Let me summarize what I think was said here.

35 grams recovered = 35/31.103= 1.125 T.O.

150 lbs x 14.583 = 2,187.45 T.O. starting weight

1.125 T.O. / 2,187.45 T.O. = 0.00051 troy oz per pound

or; 0.00000514 % yield.

Not trash but not a candidate for aqua regia.

Your numbers are not reasonable, 4metals... as I prefer metric I'll ignore the troys...
0.00000514% = 0.0514 grams per ton. He got 35g from 0.075 ton.

You went the wrong way when going to percent and mixed up the units.

1.125 T.O. / 2,187.45 T.O. = 0.00051 troy oz gold per troy oz feed stock
= 0.051 % yield

This must be the first time I have corrected you. :wink:

Göran

:shock: that's a lot of math

35 grams (recovered Au) divided by 150 lb (starting material) = .23 grams per pound :mrgreen:

But the real question still is --- is the gold coming from "inside" the ceramic - or is it gold left over from incomplete processing in the first place (gold plating under silicon dies etc.)

Roj - where there ceramics that still had the silicon die struck to them :?:

It would be interesting to see an actual fire assay done on the ceramic AFTER they are run to "completion"

One thing I am (relatively) sure of is that there are no gold "bonding wires" in the ceramic - but that does not mean gold is not applied/used in some other way "inside" the ceramic

As already pointed out - filtering "pulverized" ceramic is a "nightmare" :!: :!: :!:

If it turns out there actually is gold "inside" the ceramic I think I would be inclined to go with smelting (after pulverizing the ceramic) rather then wet chemistry

The other question would be - if there is gold inside the ceramic - is it in "all" types ceramic CPUs - or - just some types :?:

Kurt

 

[nickvc]

As you have recovered 35 grams so far that shows a return of 28 grams over cost less chemicals and time or $1100, that's not bad pocket money, there are ways to speed up certain things like filtering.
The question still remains where does the gold come from?

 

[4metals]

Over the years I have learned some of the best (albeit unexpected) yields come from refiners processing material they have no business processing.

 

[Roj]

I actually do this as a side business as my main income comes from another business . I have attached some pics of the already processed ceramics before I pulverised it. I did not buy this 150lbs actually were what i processed past 3 years and been putting them on the side . They were mixed models mostly intel 468 / pentium pro / some AMD / Alpha / HP . pretty much all high yield older ceramics . Btw I still belive I have gold left there .
I did not recover the silver or any other PM beside gold .
I want to thank each and everyone in this awesome forum . Because without your knowledge and information you make it available to all I wouldn't be able to do any of this.

 

[patnor1011]

If I would have to guess where that gold you recovered came from I would rather guess that it came from dried out AR or metal salts deposited on remnants of undissolved metals than any wiring or printing inside ceramic package.
These metal salts are quite visible on your feedstock and there is quite a lot of it.