Identifying phosphore presence in golden connectors - if so how to process for gold recovery ?

[uciocciucorsu]

Hi everybody,

it's my first message on this forum, and first of all, I apologize for the bad quality of my English.

I am "uciocciucorsu", which means "the Corsican Owl" in Corsican Language. Corsica is a little island in the Mediterranean Sea. Unfortunately, we belong to France ( beurrrkkk......).

Here is my first question.

Dealing with phosphored copper connectors, my australian friend E-Waste Ben told me it was very hard to process them for gold recovery.

Could you be kind enough to tell me wether in your opinion those golden connectors ( see attached) could be hard to process because of phosphore presence ?

It seems to be a very old electronic board indeed, and may be there was no phosphore at that time….

Let's cross our fingers before your response...

Best,

 

[Joko sulistyo]

I often processing that type of connectors.I get from old industrial textil machine boards.Usually I process them using dilute nitric acid(hno3) until all the base metal totally dissolved.The gold foils from this type of connectors is look good and easy to melt to be impure gold.

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[uciocciucorsu]

thank you so much Joko !!! :G

 

[Joko sulistyo]

I still have a picture.This gold is come from 250 grams of connectors like yours.This is not pure gold but close to 18k.

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[nickvc]

Nitric can be hard to source and expensive for many members so I’d suggest trying AP, there are plenty of threads covering this process if you use the search function, this uses Hcl which is cheap and easy to source but it does take some time to work.

 

[Joko sulistyo]

Yes.I agree.for many reasons,AP is better.Just take a longer time.AP is better and safer than nitric.

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[snoman701]

Why would it be difficult to process phos copper connectors? But further,why would connectors be made of phos copper?

 

[g_axelsson]

Phosphor bronze has good elastic properties and can be made into flexible contacts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphor_bronze

https://www.google.se/search?q=Phosphor+bronze+connector

Looking at the composition of the alloy I would be more concerned about the tin content, it could mess things up, but nothing that can't be handled.

To go back to the original poster, there are a lot of different ways to extract the gold from the connectors. Which one that is best for you depends on your situation. Since you are asking, are you going to learn how to refine yourself? Then I suggest you start with some simpler material, like gold fingers or carat scrap.
If this is a one time deal, don't bother refining it yourself. Sell it to someone who knows how to refine.

If you really want to find out how to refine this scrap, then read up on gold connector pins, the forum is full of information but it will take time and work from your side.

Göran

 

[uciocciucorsu]

Thank you so much Aria
Many thanks to goran too