" Help ! Have a deplating set up but cant get good yeild"

[Shunter421]

Hi all

will keep the intro brief fascinated by gold recovery as a passion project i have purchased a deplating machine from china. what a nightmare the tech people flew over to install and didn't speak any English and it yielded from 300kg of scrap ram and cpu 25grams of gold. after drying and melting down the black silt that was captured by the filter


here is a link to the machine
https://zzzyjx.en.made-in-china.com...PCB-Board-CPU-ARM-Gold-Deplating-Machine.html

the machine has vats and vaccum pumps etc.. its pretty sizeable setup $50k usd

disappointed from the outcome and zero help from the factory i am at a lost end

i have had the "potions tested" to see what they use to strip the gold and then the last powder to precipitate it which i believe is where the issue seems to be.

i still have the 300 litres of solution which i believe there to be gold in.

i have since purchased an electrowinning machine to try reclaim the gold this way

lost with the whole project has anyone else tried one of these machines or tried to deplate the gold with sodium and precipitate it with sulphur?

any help would be great thank you

 

[nickvc]

Can you be more specific about what reactants you are using as that may help us to help you, we could guess but that probably would not be helpful.

 

[Shunter421]

Can you be more specific about what reactants you are using as that may help us to help you, we could guess but that probably would not be helpful.

Thank you for your reply

When i was shown how to operate the machine i was supplied an "a,b,c" chemical powder i have had these tested so i can recreate the powders locally i have attached the data sheets

to deplate the gold i had to use "a&B" mixed with water no heat and it seemed to strip the gold well

the next phase was to filter the solution into a large holding tank with a mixer and add "c" leave for 5 hours rotating
to precipitate the gold into a black dust/mud caught by a filter it wasnt very good yeild from the 300kg of mixed ram & cpus

the ram and cpu werent crushed just deplated

i have retained the waste solution in the hope that i can recovery what i feel is the missed gold.

Many thanks for replying appreciate you reaching out to me

 

[Yggdrasil]

Hi all

will keep the intro brief fascinated by gold recovery as a passion project i have purchased a deplating machine from china. what a nightmare the tech people flew over to install and didn't speak any English and it yielded from 300kg of scrap ram and cpu 25grams of gold. after drying and melting down the black silt that was captured by the filter


here is a link to the machine
https://zzzyjx.en.made-in-china.com...PCB-Board-CPU-ARM-Gold-Deplating-Machine.html

the machine has vats and vaccum pumps etc.. its pretty sizeable setup $50k usd

disappointed from the outcome and zero help from the factory i am at a lost end

i have had the "potions tested" to see what they use to strip the gold and then the last powder to precipitate it which i believe is where the issue seems to be.

i still have the 300 litres of solution which i believe there to be gold in.

i have since purchased an electrowinning machine to try reclaim the gold this way

lost with the whole project has anyone else tried one of these machines or tried to deplate the gold with sodium and precipitate it with sulphur?

any help would be great thank you

Welcome to us.
The issue with these magic potions and the related industries are that they usually take generic chemical products and sell them at inflated prices.
Next they shroud this in a fog of names and mumbu jumbo so the buyer can't replace things easily.

Your tests is above me to decode from your tests.
Have you asked them for a MSDS?
Any one selling chemical compounds are obliged to provide one for each compound.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Thank you for your reply

When i was shown how to operate the machine i was supplied an "a,b,c" chemical powder i have had these tested so i can recreate the powders locally i have attached the data sheets

to deplate the gold i had to use "a&B" mixed with water no heat and it seemed to strip the gold well

the next phase was to filter the solution into a large holding tank with a mixer and add "c" leave for 5 hours rotating
to precipitate the gold into a black dust/mud caught by a filter it wasnt very good yeild from the 300kg of mixed ram & cpus

the ram and cpu werent crushed just deplated

i have retained the waste solution in the hope that i can recovery what i feel is the missed gold.

Many thanks for replying appreciate you reaching out to me

The majority of the values are inside the chips themselves.
You need to rethink your process a bit.

The easy way to assure you get the Gold out will be to cement it on Copper.


Can you provide us with a more detailed procedure for the use of the machine?
Do you add water or anything else?
Do you have a pH?

 

[nickvc]

You need better data than what you have , if you have anywhere that does proper analysis then send some dry powders and have them analyzed so you know exactly what you have used.

 

[Slochteren]

Depending on your feedstock 25 gr could be high if there are a lot of newer Pentium s in it. If there are mostly ram sticks your yeild should be a bit higher, also depending on what kind of ramsticks. Before trying to find gold that maybe there or maybe not, we need more specific your feedstock. A picture could be informative..

 

[Yggdrasil]

Thank you for your reply

When i was shown how to operate the machine i was supplied an "a,b,c" chemical powder i have had these tested so i can recreate the powders locally i have attached the data sheets

to deplate the gold i had to use "a&B" mixed with water no heat and it seemed to strip the gold well

the next phase was to filter the solution into a large holding tank with a mixer and add "c" leave for 5 hours rotating
to precipitate the gold into a black dust/mud caught by a filter it wasnt very good yeild from the 300kg of mixed ram & cpus

the ram and cpu werent crushed just deplated

i have retained the waste solution in the hope that i can recovery what i feel is the missed gold.

Many thanks for replying appreciate you reaching out to me

I just wish you had come here first.
You could probably have saved a lot of money.
Anyway things are how they are.
Are you having a steady stream of material coming in to you?
How are the material treated before you load it into the machine?

 

[Yggdrasil]

Thank you for your reply

When i was shown how to operate the machine i was supplied an "a,b,c" chemical powder i have had these tested so i can recreate the powders locally i have attached the data sheets

to deplate the gold i had to use "a&B" mixed with water no heat and it seemed to strip the gold well

the next phase was to filter the solution into a large holding tank with a mixer and add "c" leave for 5 hours rotating
to precipitate the gold into a black dust/mud caught by a filter it wasnt very good yeild from the 300kg of mixed ram & cpus

the ram and cpu werent crushed just deplated

i have retained the waste solution in the hope that i can recovery what i feel is the missed gold.

Many thanks for replying appreciate you reaching out to me

Just a heads up.
It is exceedingly important to establish if the chemicals you are using is not Cyanide based.
That is the reason for the pH question.
If the pH is around 9-11 after mixing your chemicals it is probable that it may be Cyanide based and you NEED to keep all acids away from it.
Sodium is a metal and will not dissolve Gold, Sulfur will not precipitate it either.
Sodium Cyanide on the other hand will dissolve Gold.
There are simple tests for Gold in solution, but we need to know if is Cyanide based first.

 

[Crudmudgeon]

And that test notably did not analyze for C (carbon), N (nitrogen), O (oxygen). There are easy to use Cyanide test strips:

 

[Crudmudgeon]

Neither A nor B have 20+% iron so it's not Ferricyanide/Eco-goldex. That makes Sodium Cyanide more likely, especially since there is also no halogens detected so gold isn't being dissolved as the halide salt.
Could be oxidized by sodium nitrate... solubilized as the sulfate? Precipitated with sulfite?
Anion IC (ion chromatography) can tell what salts are present (NO3, SO3, SO4) vs elemental tests like spectroscopic methods.

 

[Yggdrasil]

I think we need the factory instructions if we are going to get past pure guesswork.
Even better the MSDS.

 

[haveagojoe]

i have retained the waste solution in the hope that i can recovery what i feel is the missed gold.

Glad to hear you have not discarded a large volume of unknown, untreated toxic waste solution. However unfortunately you may have already created significant toxic fumes.

I suggest you hire an interpreter and communicate with the manufacturer to find out precisely what you have. Do not proceed until you have this information, understand and mitigate the hazards of handling the chemicals, and have established appropriate procedures for management of fumes and safe treatment and disposal of wastes.

Any of the possible waste solutions will contain toxic metal salts, as well as whatever chemicals are used to strip the gold, all of which are also toxic. The processes used for gold recovery also produce noxious fumes. They can cause major harm, even death. Discharging waste into drainage systems or the environment will cause enormous irreversable damage and could land you in a lot of trouble with the law. There is potentially serious risk not only to your surroundings and the environment, but also to yourself and your operatives.

Gold recovery cannot be done safely or effectively by simply buying an expensive machine. With a little study you could achieve the same results at a tiny fraction of the expense, and without exposing yourself to unknown and potentially serious hazards.

 

[4metals]

Unfortunately the machine and its mystery chemistry can only work on gold that is exposed. For this reason some granulation to expose more of the values will be needed along with bench tests. If you can see the chemistry working you can do tests in stirred beakers adding the chemistry per their instructions to see if you get the expected yields.

Having worked with e-scrap on larger scales it is normal to expect between 3 and 8 oz of gold per ton of e-scrap. You are not far off from the low end with 30% of a ton.

I had a client in the Indonesia who insisted we buy the equipment he needed from China. The prices were low but the documentation was poor and the equipment ended up not working to their claims. Since then I have steered away from the Chinese equipment.