Like etack said, it looks like 300 series stainless steel. Probably quite thick stainless. This non-magnetic stainless would stand up to any strength of hot nitric and it would also stand up to the hot concentrated sulfuric (in the comments, the guy said it was 98%) use in the 1st part to break down the plastic.
Very dangerous process. Hot 98% sulfuric is one of the most dangerous chemicals on the planet - it produces terrible burns. One of the few chemicals that is more dangerous than hot sulfuric is HF, at any temperature, which the guy uses in the 2nd part to dissolve the fiber/Aluminum, after he got rid of the base metals with nitric. A drop of HF on your finger can burn its way to the bone. HF is so dangerous (and so unnecessary for any type of refining), we don't allow it to be discussed as a part of a process on this forum. I would guess he used HF because HCl (to eat the Al) would attack the stainless. Actually, the only Al I can think would be there are the bonding wires. He probably could have not used the HF and could have gone straight to aqua regia.
The guy started with 10.5kg of those black plastic ICs and he said he recovered 81g of gold. At a $1333 gold spot, that's exactly $150 per pound. If you believe these numbers, I have a bridge for sale. I have never run those exact parts, but I would guess they're not worth 1/10 to 1/5 of that. The gold powder he made looked nowhere near 81g. Maybe patnor1011 will tell us what the average yields are.
When I see these types of processes that generate a lot of waste acids on fairly lo-grade material, I always wonder what they do with this waste??? You get 3 guesses and the 1st 2 don't count, as we used to say in the 3rd grade.
I have commented on these videos before. I didn't like the process any better this time. Also, it seems the guy's techniques would allow for gold losses
Were I you, I would first study this thread started by patnor1011. It's quite long but it's the best thread on the subject.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827
