Hi All, this has been my covid hobby since lockdown started as I had been storing all my old PC parts for years with the intention of exploring PM reclamation when I found the time.
As a result I've been building a child exclusion zone for chemicals, chemical lockup, extraction system etc as I have a strong respect for safety and my kids.
So I finally got to the point of playing with some processing strategies I had read about, and consequently made all the mistakes I see other beginers make. So I'm doing my best here to try not to ask the same old questions that keep popping up.
All comments will be humbly appreciated as the experience many of you have is huge compared to my 6 months!.
Well, here we go...
My first experiment was to process 6.5 gramms of nuggets I found in the Kalgoorlie WA area into chemical form, drop with SMB, wash and melt into a single button. I procured a very precise calculation of the HCl/Nitric ratio to dissolve a Troy ounce of gold (found somewhere in these forums) and plugged it into a spreadsheet so I could match the weight of my nuggets!, I soaked the nuggets in HCl for a few days, washed for a few days, soaked in nitric, washed for a few days, re-weighed, then made up the appropriate volume of AR, waited a few days, dropped with SMB and had a great result!, Had as hard time melting it down but got there in the end. Suddenly I thought I was a pro...lol.
So the stuffups I list below are the different ways I've been trying to process ewaste.
I've decided that AR will be my preferred way to dissolve gold to keep my stock pots 'clean' of too many different chemicals. I plan in the future to only use HCl, nitric, sulfuric, sulfamic and SMB untill I know better ways.
Stuffup 1
Get some ceramic processors and dump some over estimated volume of AR onto it and..... Well that got thrown into stockpot 1 which is currently slowly being evaporated when I have time.
(Stockpot 1 had copper and air bubbler.)
Stuffup 2.
Spend lots of time cleaning up phones, ram sticks and various ewaste to remove as much iron, stickers and iC chips as possible. Then dissolve in HCl peroxide method.
Day 2 and 3 the reaction was too slow so I Added waaaayyy to much peroxide, I now know that is no good either...
After 6 weeks of observations, that solution got filtered but most of the gold is in solution. I've decided to cement that out with copper seperate to stockpot 1, but the 3litre volume just keeps taking copper so some advise on the chemistry would be great!.
Stuffup 3
Incinerate heaps of IC chips, and a heap of other 'cleanish' stuff I had prepared (circuit boards, processors, plug ends, basically a heap of everything). Then crush it as good as I could by hand.
Then soak in HCl airbubbler bucket for a month. Add lots of copper let it sit for another month so everything could cement out.
The problem with this batch is how to proceed... I created 40,litres of wash water trying to remove undissolved copper bits also dealing with a 'Matt' of fibreglass which was at the bottom of the bucket only to find undissolved circuit boards too... so all the washed solids are currently sitting in a HCl bath with an air bubbler again, ready for another cementation session..
The fines that I got from evaporating the 40Litres of wash water appear to be 50% good black stuff and 50% black ash?
The advice I am looking for here is how to proceed with the fibreglass mess on my next wash as some of it is still in 1 inch square prices, but mostly fine particles.
Conclusion...
I have taken the boring approach of evaporation of all my wash waters from my 3 different batches seperately.
All 3 batches then need to be washed seperately in Nitric..that wash water goes off to the silver/palladium stockpot?...
I'm intending on blending all the resultant filtered solids together from the 3 different batches into 1 batch of solids and proceeding from there.
Batch 1 is my first stockpot but more like all my 'lost gold' from various experiments akin to stuffup1.
Batch 2 is the HCL peroxide stuffup2.
Batch 3 is the incineration stuffup3 techqique.
The advice I am looking for is
A. Will the HCL peroxide reaction ever stop? As it keeps taking copper.
B. How to proceed with the fibreglass mash I've created by insinerating ram sticks etc.
C. How to discern the difference between 'ash' and solids in the final cleanup from the incineration/cementation batch? And how to seperate this.
All comments will be greatly appreciated.
Regards, Dan
As a result I've been building a child exclusion zone for chemicals, chemical lockup, extraction system etc as I have a strong respect for safety and my kids.
So I finally got to the point of playing with some processing strategies I had read about, and consequently made all the mistakes I see other beginers make. So I'm doing my best here to try not to ask the same old questions that keep popping up.
All comments will be humbly appreciated as the experience many of you have is huge compared to my 6 months!.
Well, here we go...
My first experiment was to process 6.5 gramms of nuggets I found in the Kalgoorlie WA area into chemical form, drop with SMB, wash and melt into a single button. I procured a very precise calculation of the HCl/Nitric ratio to dissolve a Troy ounce of gold (found somewhere in these forums) and plugged it into a spreadsheet so I could match the weight of my nuggets!, I soaked the nuggets in HCl for a few days, washed for a few days, soaked in nitric, washed for a few days, re-weighed, then made up the appropriate volume of AR, waited a few days, dropped with SMB and had a great result!, Had as hard time melting it down but got there in the end. Suddenly I thought I was a pro...lol.
So the stuffups I list below are the different ways I've been trying to process ewaste.
I've decided that AR will be my preferred way to dissolve gold to keep my stock pots 'clean' of too many different chemicals. I plan in the future to only use HCl, nitric, sulfuric, sulfamic and SMB untill I know better ways.
Stuffup 1
Get some ceramic processors and dump some over estimated volume of AR onto it and..... Well that got thrown into stockpot 1 which is currently slowly being evaporated when I have time.
(Stockpot 1 had copper and air bubbler.)
Stuffup 2.
Spend lots of time cleaning up phones, ram sticks and various ewaste to remove as much iron, stickers and iC chips as possible. Then dissolve in HCl peroxide method.
Day 2 and 3 the reaction was too slow so I Added waaaayyy to much peroxide, I now know that is no good either...
After 6 weeks of observations, that solution got filtered but most of the gold is in solution. I've decided to cement that out with copper seperate to stockpot 1, but the 3litre volume just keeps taking copper so some advise on the chemistry would be great!.
Stuffup 3
Incinerate heaps of IC chips, and a heap of other 'cleanish' stuff I had prepared (circuit boards, processors, plug ends, basically a heap of everything). Then crush it as good as I could by hand.
Then soak in HCl airbubbler bucket for a month. Add lots of copper let it sit for another month so everything could cement out.
The problem with this batch is how to proceed... I created 40,litres of wash water trying to remove undissolved copper bits also dealing with a 'Matt' of fibreglass which was at the bottom of the bucket only to find undissolved circuit boards too... so all the washed solids are currently sitting in a HCl bath with an air bubbler again, ready for another cementation session..
The fines that I got from evaporating the 40Litres of wash water appear to be 50% good black stuff and 50% black ash?
The advice I am looking for here is how to proceed with the fibreglass mess on my next wash as some of it is still in 1 inch square prices, but mostly fine particles.
Conclusion...
I have taken the boring approach of evaporation of all my wash waters from my 3 different batches seperately.
All 3 batches then need to be washed seperately in Nitric..that wash water goes off to the silver/palladium stockpot?...
I'm intending on blending all the resultant filtered solids together from the 3 different batches into 1 batch of solids and proceeding from there.
Batch 1 is my first stockpot but more like all my 'lost gold' from various experiments akin to stuffup1.
Batch 2 is the HCL peroxide stuffup2.
Batch 3 is the incineration stuffup3 techqique.
The advice I am looking for is
A. Will the HCL peroxide reaction ever stop? As it keeps taking copper.
B. How to proceed with the fibreglass mash I've created by insinerating ram sticks etc.
C. How to discern the difference between 'ash' and solids in the final cleanup from the incineration/cementation batch? And how to seperate this.
All comments will be greatly appreciated.
Regards, Dan