Martinvanzyl
New member
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2013
- Messages
- 3
I have 3 questions about reverse electroplating, I hope somebody can help with:
1. After deplating is complete, I will let it settle for some time, then pour off most of the solution, which has much less gold in it than the remainder at the bottom of the dish. Now do I keep this and use it again with a new batch and just add a bit of sulphuric acid to make up the volume every time I reuse it?
2. If I keep reusing the same sulphuric acid, how do I know when it is saturated?
3. Reverse electroplating looks to be much more productive than other methods, so Could I not use it on other components as well, such as cpu pins with solder and pins with exposed base metal?
Many thanks.
Many thanks to all who give up their time to help out us beginners. I hope I'm in the right section here.
I'm retired, on pension and a bit broke. Been scrapping for a few years now to supplement my pension.
For the last two years or so, been collecting some gold bearing electronics. Mainly edge connectors (fingers), pins and chips.
While collecting I've also been studying gold refining, mainly on Youtube. Moose Scrapper, Sreetips, Indeedeitdoes, Originalfeets, Geo, Boris Petrov, Drewmetalsmith, Patnor and a few others. Now I think I'm almost ready to actually start. I have a few pounds of fingers, about two pounds of chips (mainly RAM), a couple of hundred CPUs (only 10 ceramic), a small jar of pins (being an idiot, I mixed them)
So I thought I'll write myself an instruction manual, mainly for my own use.
Now being an eternal optimist, I'm going to copy and paste this (far from complete) manual here, in the hope that you chaps will take a look and help me write it.
I will really appreciate any help you can offer.
Please let me say this: I will never publish this for financial gain. I have no intention to make money from this writing. But if it turns out to be of any educational value to anybody, I will reserve no copyright.
Below is what I have written so far.
GOLD FROM E-SCRAP
This is my attempt at writing an instruction manual for myself to recover and refine gold from e-scrap. Please bear in mind that I am totally unschooled in this endeavour and that everything that I write here is from what I have learned from books and the internet, so it may contain many mistakes. For that reason I strongly advise anybody who is not already well schooled in chemistry to NOT USE THIS AS A GUIDE OR AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL. This is for my own use and the only reason I am putting it out here is in the hope that I may get some useful suggestions and constructive criticism.
I realise that there are many different ways to recover and refine gold from e-scrap. The methods below are probably not the best or the quickest, but it is what I hope to try. If anybody has any suggestions on how to improve on this, I would appreciate your input.
While working with these chemicals, I will always wear the necessary safety gear and/or work in a well ventilated area or outside.
1. EDGE CONNECTORS
A. REMOVING THE GOLD FOILS FROM THE FIBRE
i. Prepare glass or plastic container with bubbler tube at the bottom.
ii. Put connector strips in container on top of bubbler.
iii. Add enough hydrochloric acid to cover connector strips.
iv. Switch air on and leave it for a few days. Shake the container occasionally.
v. When all the gold, or almost all of it has detached, pour the acid off through a coffee filter.
vi. Pour the acid into a plastic or glass container for reuse another time. Mark the container clearly and store securely.
vii. Pour tap water onto the connector strips and detached gold foils and swish it around.
viii. Pour this water off through the same filter but into a different container to be properly disposed of later.
ix. Repeat the previous two steps several times, until the water is completely clear.
x. Remove the connector strips one at a time, while checking that each is free of gold foils.
xi. Any strips that still have foils firmly stuck to them, can just go in the next batch.
xii. Use a tap water spray to wash all the foils into the coffee filter.
xiii. Dispose of this water properly.
xiv. Remove all the foils from the filter, into a small container. Half litre bottle with a plastic lid would be iedeal.
B. REMOVING MOST REMAINING BASE METALS FROM THE FOILS.
i. HCl + bleach create very dangerous fumes, so use a fume hood.
ii. Pour enough hydrochloric acid to almost cover all the foils.
iii. Add about one part bleach for 4 parts acid.
iv. Swish the solution around and leave it a while.
v. Check after a short time and if everything is not dissolved, leave it a short time again and repeat until everything is dissolved.
vi. Filter the solution.
vii. Save the filter with other used filters.
viii. This solution is now ready for precipitation, or it may be kept to dissolve more gold.
C. PRECIPITATING THE GOLD OUT OF THE SOLUTION.
i. Add a few teaspoons of sodium meta-bisulphite to half a cup of water.
ii. Pour the meta-bisulphite solution into the gold-bearing solution.
iii. Leave for a few hours until all the gold has precipitated to the bottom.
iv. Carefully pour off the solution without disturbing the gold at the bottom.
v. Rinse with clean water.
vi. Pour rinse water off through a used filter, which is saved with other used filters.
vii. Repeat the rinse a few times.
viii. Leave the gold to dry.
ix. The gold is now ready for melting or further refining.
2. PINS WITH NO VISIBLE BASE METAL. – Deplate with sulphuric acid (Sreetips)
A. Electrolysis.
i. Place a lead strip in the bottom of a glass dish, to use as cathode.
ii. Pour sulphuric acid into dish.
iii. Place copper mesh basket in the dish, so that all pins are covered by the acid, but do not allow it to touch the cathode.
iv. Turn the voltage down to it’s lowest setting before connecting the leads.
v. Connect the negative lead to the lead cathode.
vi. Connect the positive lead to the mesh basket (cathode) and switch the current on.
vii. Increase the voltage gradually, until the current approaches the supply’s rated current.
viii. The current will start dropping as more gold is deplated, so the voltage can be increased from time to time.
ix. When all the gold is deplated, the current will drop to very near zero.
x. Switch the supply off and remove the leads.
B. Recovering the gold from the sulphuric acid
i. Prepare a second dish with clean water.
ii. Lift the basket out of the acid and allow it to drain much of the acid off, until it stops dripping.
iii. Put the basket in the clean water and shake to rinse off all the remaining acid. This water now contains a small amount of gold bearing acid, so it should be kept to be filtered later.
iv. There should be no more gold on the pins, so the basket may be emptied, but it must not be returned to the acid before it is completely dried off.
v. After emptying the basket, I would dry it off, using a hot air gun.
vi. The dry basket may now be refilled with new plated pins, and returned to the sulphuric acid.
vii. When all plated pins have been deplated and the process shut down, wash the basket thoroughly in clean water and store, preferably in clean water.
viii. The same acid can be used several times, until it becomes saturated.
ix. If the acid becomes saturated or at any time after deplating, the gold may be recovered from it by the method below.
x. Prepare a third dish, large enough to hold at least about six times as much water as the acid in the first dish. Fill this with clean water.
xi. Slowly pour the acid from the first dish into the water in the large dish. NEVER POUR WATER INTO THE ACID.
xii. Rinse the dish in the same water.
xiii. Stir well and leave to settle, ideally overnight. Two or three days would be even better.
xiv. Carefully pour off the clearer green water from the top. Do not allow any of the darker water to flow out – that is where the gold is. The light green near the top is copper.
xv. Slowly add clean water to the gold bearing acid. This acid should now be diluted enough for water to be added to it, rather than having to add the acid to the water.
xvi. Repeat this rinse (steps xiii, xiv, and xv) until only clear water can be poured off the top.
xvii. The dark stuff left over now should be mostly gold with no copper in it.
xviii. Let it dry and refine it further. See section 10.
3. PINS WITH VISIBLE BASE METAL, BUT NO SOLDER. – Hydrochloric/hydrogen peroxide
4. PINS WITH SOLDER. - Boil in HCl.
i. Put pins in glass coffee-maker bowl.
ii. Cover with HCl.
iii. Cover lightly to reduce evaporation.
iv. Put on low heat and let it boil slowly until all base metals are dissolved.
v. Filter the solution through a coffee filter.
vi. Rinse the hollow gold plate with clean water.
vii. The hollow gold plate may now be refined further as described in section 10.
5. CHIPS. - Fire – Caustic soda - (Boris Petrov)
i. Put chips in a metal container. I will use a stainless steel pan.
ii. Put container with chips in coal fire.
iii. Remove from fire when all the chips have gone white or light grey.
iv. Crush until fine. Any chips that won’t crush can go back in the fire with the next lot.
v. Strain through a kitchen sieve into a dish of water.
vi. Whatever does not go through the sieve must be crushed and sieved again.
vii. Repeat step v. until only large metal bits are left.
viii. Rinse these metal bits into the strained concentrate (stuff that has gone through the sieve).
ix. Bin the metal bits.
x. Put the concentrate into a stainless steel pot, fill it with water and stir in a small amount of caustic soda and leave it over night.
xi. Next day, carefully pour off about one third of the water. Top up the container, let it stand for about a minute and pour off one third again. Repeat this panning process over and over until the water is fairly clear.
xii. Next dissolve silica, aluminium and other reactive metals by boiling in a very strong caustic soda solution. Boil for about one hour.
xiii. Pan again, as in step xi.
xiv. Dissolve the base metals by boiling in HCl as described in Pins with solder.
xv. Wires may now be refined again with HCl/bleach.
6. Green fibre processors. – Same as chips???
7. Brown fibre processors. - ???
8. Ceramic processors. - Aqua regia. Will bleach not work here?
9. Refining. - Hydrochloric /bleach
10. Removing solder mask. – Caustic soda
11. Smelting. – Map gas.
1. After deplating is complete, I will let it settle for some time, then pour off most of the solution, which has much less gold in it than the remainder at the bottom of the dish. Now do I keep this and use it again with a new batch and just add a bit of sulphuric acid to make up the volume every time I reuse it?
2. If I keep reusing the same sulphuric acid, how do I know when it is saturated?
3. Reverse electroplating looks to be much more productive than other methods, so Could I not use it on other components as well, such as cpu pins with solder and pins with exposed base metal?
Many thanks.
Many thanks to all who give up their time to help out us beginners. I hope I'm in the right section here.
I'm retired, on pension and a bit broke. Been scrapping for a few years now to supplement my pension.
For the last two years or so, been collecting some gold bearing electronics. Mainly edge connectors (fingers), pins and chips.
While collecting I've also been studying gold refining, mainly on Youtube. Moose Scrapper, Sreetips, Indeedeitdoes, Originalfeets, Geo, Boris Petrov, Drewmetalsmith, Patnor and a few others. Now I think I'm almost ready to actually start. I have a few pounds of fingers, about two pounds of chips (mainly RAM), a couple of hundred CPUs (only 10 ceramic), a small jar of pins (being an idiot, I mixed them)
So I thought I'll write myself an instruction manual, mainly for my own use.
Now being an eternal optimist, I'm going to copy and paste this (far from complete) manual here, in the hope that you chaps will take a look and help me write it.
I will really appreciate any help you can offer.
Please let me say this: I will never publish this for financial gain. I have no intention to make money from this writing. But if it turns out to be of any educational value to anybody, I will reserve no copyright.
Below is what I have written so far.
GOLD FROM E-SCRAP
This is my attempt at writing an instruction manual for myself to recover and refine gold from e-scrap. Please bear in mind that I am totally unschooled in this endeavour and that everything that I write here is from what I have learned from books and the internet, so it may contain many mistakes. For that reason I strongly advise anybody who is not already well schooled in chemistry to NOT USE THIS AS A GUIDE OR AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL. This is for my own use and the only reason I am putting it out here is in the hope that I may get some useful suggestions and constructive criticism.
I realise that there are many different ways to recover and refine gold from e-scrap. The methods below are probably not the best or the quickest, but it is what I hope to try. If anybody has any suggestions on how to improve on this, I would appreciate your input.
While working with these chemicals, I will always wear the necessary safety gear and/or work in a well ventilated area or outside.
1. EDGE CONNECTORS
A. REMOVING THE GOLD FOILS FROM THE FIBRE
i. Prepare glass or plastic container with bubbler tube at the bottom.
ii. Put connector strips in container on top of bubbler.
iii. Add enough hydrochloric acid to cover connector strips.
iv. Switch air on and leave it for a few days. Shake the container occasionally.
v. When all the gold, or almost all of it has detached, pour the acid off through a coffee filter.
vi. Pour the acid into a plastic or glass container for reuse another time. Mark the container clearly and store securely.
vii. Pour tap water onto the connector strips and detached gold foils and swish it around.
viii. Pour this water off through the same filter but into a different container to be properly disposed of later.
ix. Repeat the previous two steps several times, until the water is completely clear.
x. Remove the connector strips one at a time, while checking that each is free of gold foils.
xi. Any strips that still have foils firmly stuck to them, can just go in the next batch.
xii. Use a tap water spray to wash all the foils into the coffee filter.
xiii. Dispose of this water properly.
xiv. Remove all the foils from the filter, into a small container. Half litre bottle with a plastic lid would be iedeal.
B. REMOVING MOST REMAINING BASE METALS FROM THE FOILS.
i. HCl + bleach create very dangerous fumes, so use a fume hood.
ii. Pour enough hydrochloric acid to almost cover all the foils.
iii. Add about one part bleach for 4 parts acid.
iv. Swish the solution around and leave it a while.
v. Check after a short time and if everything is not dissolved, leave it a short time again and repeat until everything is dissolved.
vi. Filter the solution.
vii. Save the filter with other used filters.
viii. This solution is now ready for precipitation, or it may be kept to dissolve more gold.
C. PRECIPITATING THE GOLD OUT OF THE SOLUTION.
i. Add a few teaspoons of sodium meta-bisulphite to half a cup of water.
ii. Pour the meta-bisulphite solution into the gold-bearing solution.
iii. Leave for a few hours until all the gold has precipitated to the bottom.
iv. Carefully pour off the solution without disturbing the gold at the bottom.
v. Rinse with clean water.
vi. Pour rinse water off through a used filter, which is saved with other used filters.
vii. Repeat the rinse a few times.
viii. Leave the gold to dry.
ix. The gold is now ready for melting or further refining.
2. PINS WITH NO VISIBLE BASE METAL. – Deplate with sulphuric acid (Sreetips)
A. Electrolysis.
i. Place a lead strip in the bottom of a glass dish, to use as cathode.
ii. Pour sulphuric acid into dish.
iii. Place copper mesh basket in the dish, so that all pins are covered by the acid, but do not allow it to touch the cathode.
iv. Turn the voltage down to it’s lowest setting before connecting the leads.
v. Connect the negative lead to the lead cathode.
vi. Connect the positive lead to the mesh basket (cathode) and switch the current on.
vii. Increase the voltage gradually, until the current approaches the supply’s rated current.
viii. The current will start dropping as more gold is deplated, so the voltage can be increased from time to time.
ix. When all the gold is deplated, the current will drop to very near zero.
x. Switch the supply off and remove the leads.
B. Recovering the gold from the sulphuric acid
i. Prepare a second dish with clean water.
ii. Lift the basket out of the acid and allow it to drain much of the acid off, until it stops dripping.
iii. Put the basket in the clean water and shake to rinse off all the remaining acid. This water now contains a small amount of gold bearing acid, so it should be kept to be filtered later.
iv. There should be no more gold on the pins, so the basket may be emptied, but it must not be returned to the acid before it is completely dried off.
v. After emptying the basket, I would dry it off, using a hot air gun.
vi. The dry basket may now be refilled with new plated pins, and returned to the sulphuric acid.
vii. When all plated pins have been deplated and the process shut down, wash the basket thoroughly in clean water and store, preferably in clean water.
viii. The same acid can be used several times, until it becomes saturated.
ix. If the acid becomes saturated or at any time after deplating, the gold may be recovered from it by the method below.
x. Prepare a third dish, large enough to hold at least about six times as much water as the acid in the first dish. Fill this with clean water.
xi. Slowly pour the acid from the first dish into the water in the large dish. NEVER POUR WATER INTO THE ACID.
xii. Rinse the dish in the same water.
xiii. Stir well and leave to settle, ideally overnight. Two or three days would be even better.
xiv. Carefully pour off the clearer green water from the top. Do not allow any of the darker water to flow out – that is where the gold is. The light green near the top is copper.
xv. Slowly add clean water to the gold bearing acid. This acid should now be diluted enough for water to be added to it, rather than having to add the acid to the water.
xvi. Repeat this rinse (steps xiii, xiv, and xv) until only clear water can be poured off the top.
xvii. The dark stuff left over now should be mostly gold with no copper in it.
xviii. Let it dry and refine it further. See section 10.
3. PINS WITH VISIBLE BASE METAL, BUT NO SOLDER. – Hydrochloric/hydrogen peroxide
4. PINS WITH SOLDER. - Boil in HCl.
i. Put pins in glass coffee-maker bowl.
ii. Cover with HCl.
iii. Cover lightly to reduce evaporation.
iv. Put on low heat and let it boil slowly until all base metals are dissolved.
v. Filter the solution through a coffee filter.
vi. Rinse the hollow gold plate with clean water.
vii. The hollow gold plate may now be refined further as described in section 10.
5. CHIPS. - Fire – Caustic soda - (Boris Petrov)
i. Put chips in a metal container. I will use a stainless steel pan.
ii. Put container with chips in coal fire.
iii. Remove from fire when all the chips have gone white or light grey.
iv. Crush until fine. Any chips that won’t crush can go back in the fire with the next lot.
v. Strain through a kitchen sieve into a dish of water.
vi. Whatever does not go through the sieve must be crushed and sieved again.
vii. Repeat step v. until only large metal bits are left.
viii. Rinse these metal bits into the strained concentrate (stuff that has gone through the sieve).
ix. Bin the metal bits.
x. Put the concentrate into a stainless steel pot, fill it with water and stir in a small amount of caustic soda and leave it over night.
xi. Next day, carefully pour off about one third of the water. Top up the container, let it stand for about a minute and pour off one third again. Repeat this panning process over and over until the water is fairly clear.
xii. Next dissolve silica, aluminium and other reactive metals by boiling in a very strong caustic soda solution. Boil for about one hour.
xiii. Pan again, as in step xi.
xiv. Dissolve the base metals by boiling in HCl as described in Pins with solder.
xv. Wires may now be refined again with HCl/bleach.
6. Green fibre processors. – Same as chips???
7. Brown fibre processors. - ???
8. Ceramic processors. - Aqua regia. Will bleach not work here?
9. Refining. - Hydrochloric /bleach
10. Removing solder mask. – Caustic soda
11. Smelting. – Map gas.
