Has anyone had experience with IDE pins (Pics in post)

[ttaux]

Good day refiners,
These are pins obtained from IDE cable from old IDE cables normally used to connect older harddrives to other parts of a computer. I collected these from hundreds of 40 pin cables connectors and I have about 5 pounds of pins like these.

My 1st experiment with these I have only used 200g of pins.
They seem gold in color, but I have been stumped on the 1st step of the AP process.
(the pins lose their gold color in the AP solution and leave behind no flakes or specs when filtered after leaving it in solution for a week. I only realized a small amount of peroxide is needed after the fact. The solution tests negative with stannous chloride still however) Before I possibly waste more of the pins I wanted to ask for advice.

My question is; if done properly is there gold to be recovered here? or is this an exception to the e-scrap starting materials?

I will continue the thread on my progress based on if there are any responses.

Thank you in advance if you can lend advice, this is my 1st endeavor to refine and any help would be appreciated.

 

[ttaux]

This is a picture of how the pins look after being removed from AP after a week.
I will try again with less peroxide and update again.

 

[g_axelsson]

Please, no double posting. Keep it in one thread.

Göran

 

[anachronism]

You haven't wasted any pins if you haven't thrown anything away however the plating isn't thick, and there are better methods than dissolving all the base metals in order to get to the small amount of gold that is there.

Jon

 

[ttaux]

@Göran - Ok, I know now.

@Jon - Thanks for the response. I assume a sulphuric cell is what is considered a better method? I don't expect it to be high yield but doing the process correctly would be rewarding.

 

[butcher]

With the copper II chloride (CuCl2) leaching process, it is the higher oxidation state of the copper that dissolves or takes electrons from copper metal and other base metals.
Here the copper II chloride is reduced to copper I chloride, and the copper metal is oxidized into solution as copper ions
Cu + CuCl2 --> 2CuCl

It is not the HCl or H2O2 that leaches the copper, these are only used with copper to originally form the copper II chloride leaching solution.

H2O2 is not needed after forming CuCl2, air bubbled into the solution with small additions of HCl as needed will rejuvenate the solution converting the CuCl back into CuCl2 hungry for more copper, changing the CuCl brown solution to a bright green CuCl2 solution.
CuCl + HCl + 1/2 O2 --> CuCl2 + H2O

Adding H2O2 can form chlorine in solution which will attack gold, but with all of the copper remaining the gold will cement back out of solution as a fine brown powder with the remaining copper, here you will not get foils of gold because the gold is oxidized (dissolved) and then cemented back out onto the copper.
Adding oxygen from atmospheric air to rejuvenate the chloride leach will not form chlorine so it will not attack the gold to any extent...



The bright green solution turns brown as it becomes loaded with CuCl and other base metals, and if diluted or oversaturated it will precipitate CuCl as a white powder...

After dissolving all of the copper and base metals, if the gold was oxidized and reduced it can be found as a brown powder, if the gold was not oxidized you will have foils...

 

[Martijn]

I would strip the remaining pins in the sulfuric cell. I had pins that had more base metals compared to your pins and i got 0.28% gold. 4.8 kilo plated pins gave a bit over 13.5 grams of gold.
Be very carefull using sulfuric acid. Take your time to read the forum and always use safety gear working with acids.

 

[g_axelsson]

Before investing in a lot of equipment and acids, make sure they really are fully plated first. I've run into IDE connectors that looked stunning but in the end was nothing but brass. I've also seen stuff with fully plated connectors, but that was in equipment from the 1980:es.

You could do a small test batch, if your copper chloride from the first batch is emerald green then just dunking a new batch of pins in the copper chloride should etch any surface that isn't gold plated. No more peroxide is needed. If the copper chloride is dark brown then there is a lot of CuCl₂ dissolved, a bubbler with air takes care of that and will leave you with a solution that etches copper but not gold.

The easiest way to test the plating of a pin is a test tube with a bit of diluted nitric acid. It will show you in less than a minute if the plating is thick or thin and if it is plated at all.
Like I did here... http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=23737#p250557

Göran

 

[bigpagoda]

I did some of those pins in AP and it took a really long time. The "flakes" were really small (like powder) and almost too small to see. It took a lot of agitation and air. I ended up putting it in a black ceramic pot in the sunlight to keep it war(don't know if that helped) for about six weeks. I wouldn't do these that way again.