its first time to me here and i need help

[engbody83]

i have some cell phone boards and i want to make gold recovery so i need the steps of this process and if there speed method to remove ic's from the cell phone "chemically" as i see factory in Germany made phones recovery and i think they not remove ic's by heater it will take a time
i hope to find answer

 

[butcher]

There is a lot of things you will need to learn, like how tin reacts in acids, and all of the other metals react in acids, tin is a big problem in processing electronic scrap, if you heat tin and gold the tin will dissolve gold and make an amalgam of the two metals, tin will lower the gold melting point, so the tin can dissolve gold into it at around the temperature it takes to solder tin, once tin and gold are amalgamated together they are hard to separate, because if you tried to separate them with acids they would dissolve together in solution making a colloidal gold solution, making it almost impossible to separate, as the tin would reduce the gold in solution back to a metal that you cannot test for with regular methods, the gold will not settle, and you cannot use a chemical reagent to precipitate gold out of solution, so all you would have here is one big mess.

You have much to learn before you can do what you are asking, you will need to read a lot of material, and study, it can take years of learning.

But you are lucky if this is what you wish to learn you have found this forum, the best place in the world to learn to recover and refine precious metals, with people willing to help you learn.

so to begin you need to download Hoke's book, found in the book section, you can also buy the book that is much easier than reading it on computer or printing out the book (we do not sell the book but their are links to places that do.

You will also need to study the forum, we have discussed processing all kinds of materials even cell phones many times, the best place to start that study is the guided tour, guide to the forum and the general reaction list, found in general chat section.


The most important is reading the safety section, and learning to deal with the deadly fumes and other dangerous or deadly reactions, and learning how to deal with toxic waste you will generate.

Welcome to the forum, if you are willing to work hard, and study hard for very little pay (gold), you will love learning how to recover and refine precious metals.

 

[solar_plasma]

once tin and gold are amalgamated together they are hard to separate, because if you tried to separate them with acids they would dissolve together in solution making a colloidal gold solution, making it almost impossible to separate, as the tin would reduce the gold in solution back to a metal

lovely, looks like an remis in chess...as far as I could see, has nobody tried to preciptate the SnCl2 with H2S or an alkaline sulfide? Maybe not as easy as it looks like?

 

[butcher]

solar_plasma,
I know tin will precipitate as a sulfide, if you want the tin sulfide for some reason:
Sn + S --> SnS (s)
SnCl2 + H2S --> SnS (s) + 2HCl (aq)

Or the tin can be l precipitate as only slightly soluble a sulfate:
Sn + H2SO4 --> SnSO4 + 2H
or tin in solution can reduce another metal in solution:
Sn + CuCl2 --> SnCl2 + Cu (s)
Sn + CuSO4 --> SnSO4 + Cu (s)

but I do not know what good that would do in the discussion above, because once tin is in solution with gold, the gold changes back to metal being reduced in solution as colloidal gold metal particles, unable to be detected in a stannous test, already reduced to metal, but these tiny particles of gold colloid are charged with both opposite polarity's so they cannot be reduced and will not settle out of solution, so in essence your gold is trapped, removing the tin at this point would not help much.

beside many metals will also precipitate as sulfide's even gold:

2AuCl3 + 3H2S --> Au2S3 + 6 HCl
so if tin was also in solution you would precipitate it out with your gold, and all of the other metals in solution as well...

The colloid can be broken if it is not too bad, other times basically evaporating to dryness and incineration is about the only option of trying to recover the gold.

The point is not how to get TIN out of solution with your gold, the point should be, how to keep tin out, or remove tin before you put your gold into solution.

edited I said gold where I meant to say tin.

 

[solar_plasma]

but I do not know what good that would do in the discussion above,

Ofcourse nothing, sorry, that I was a little off-topic with my question and thank you for the explaining answer.

To all noobs, although those, who already have other profound chemical background: Listen to the old wise men of the forum and you will avoid frustations! Use the methods, that are proven! Also, myself, who wishes to try everything at once, will go three steps back now and in the need of some successes starting at some easier point again :lol:

The theory sounds always much much easier, that it is for real.

 

[engbody83]

sir thank you for your reply but i have big problem is time as i work in hard job so i need some links to find what i need directly without search for that i contact you

 

[solar_plasma]

Believe it or not, there is no step by step guide than this one butcher has given to you. Those short how-to's, which you can find here or in the net, will be extremely dangerous to follow without profound background knowledge for example like on bachelor or master level studies or if you have done your exercises on your own as butcher pointed to. And still then there is a wide cliff between theory and practice and you WILL nevertheless not always succeed in your first attempts. And your expenses will definately overtop your profit by far.

There is no step-by-step for what you want to do. There are many, and you need them all. Btw. and that's no offense:If you don't listen to butcher and try one of the many methods, would you please ask someone to post the news thread for me in the case, that you can't anymore because poisoned, so other new friends of refining can learn from this? Maybe that would help someone.

Good luck.

 

[mls26cwru]

sir thank you for your reply but i have big problem is time as i work in hard job so i need some links to find what i need directly without search for that i contact you

you come to a new forum and want someone to tell you how to preform a very detailed and intricate procedure, but don't want to put any effort in searching for/researching methods/familiarizing yourself with chemicals? you want someone to spoon feed you the whole process because you think we have all the time in the world to do it for you??? You have some serious balls asking a question like that...

if you want some friendly advice, take those cell phone boards you have and sell them too a company that will pay for for them.... the time and effort and materials that go into refining these boards are considerable.

 

[g_axelsson]

... because once tin is in solution with gold, the gold changes back to metal being reduced in solution as colloidal gold metal particles, unable to be detected in a stannous test, already reduced to metal, but these tiny particles of gold colloid are charged with both opposite polarity's so they cannot be reduced and will not settle out of solution, so in essence your gold is trapped, removing the tin at this point would not help much.

... snip ...

The colloid can be broken if it is not too bad, other times basically evaporating to dryness and incineration is about the only option of trying to recover the gold.

...

I hope I haven't quoted you too much out of content. I just wanted to ask if it really is as bad as you propose. Tin dissolved in aqua regia is turning into metastannic acid and then it will not affect the formation of gold chloride. In the same way, if you have gotten a solution with colloidal gold and excess of HCl you could not have any oxidizer left, if you had it would turn the gold back into gold chloride until all the tin is spent, tin chloride can't reduce gold twice.

When tin chloride is reducing gold chloride into gold it is at the same time oxidizing the tin chloride into tin oxide, taking it out of further reactions.
AuCl₃ + SnCl₂ + H₂O --> SnO₂ + Au + HCL

So if you have a colloidal solution, just add a bit of nitric acid and it should turn back into gold chloride and metastannic acid. The only reason I see to incinerate is if there is so much metastannic acid that it will lock in the gold chloride mecanically, making it impossible to decant or filter off the gold.

I would like to do an experiment just to prove my method would work, but right now I don't have the time and place to do it. So I wonder, am I missing something obvious here?

Göran

 

[butcher]

Goran, I would be very interested in what you find out through experimenting, as I also planned to try some more myself, really this is the only way we both are going to understand more about this very complex problem, as far as it being all that bad, I guess it depends on how much tin is in solution, what type of solution and what state that solution is in, dilute cold solutions are worse than hot concentrated, more acidic solutions seem better than less acidic solutions, and then with aqua regia if there is free acids and which, besides how much more reactive base metals are in solution, So to answer your question do I think it is all that bad, I guess all I can say is I have never seen a good time when I had tin in my solution with gold for me it is always bad, sometimes I can get out of the mess But every time I have to try I bang my head up against the oak tree and tell myself I should have took the time to deal with the tin first, instead of trying to fight it and get my gold back.

Also I think this thing is really too complicated to put into simple answers, or to explain with simple formulas, although it helps us to try and understand it.


AuCl3 + SnCl2 + H2O --> SnO2 + Au + HCL
I do not think the equation above would happen, as the acid is too strong and you have many free chlorides if not chlorine in solution.

I believe one closer would be:
AuCl3 + SnCl2 + H2O --> SNCl4 + Au (colloidal gold)
The gold chloride is reduced to colloidal gold, and the stannous chloride is oxidized to stannic chloride.

But as we both know we could have many reactions going on simultaneously in the reaction vessel, depending how much of a tin problem we could also reduce other metals in solution silver is reduced with stannous chloride to make mirrors, copper (II) chloride can also be reduced to copper (I) chloride with stannous chloride (probably the brown reaction when too much SMB is used in the stannous test for gold the brown may be copper (i) chloride coloring the Q tip...

Stannic chloride with HCl can be oxidized to a higher state.
SnCl4 + 2 HCL --> SnCl6
Or stannic chloride with tin metal can form stannous chloride again:
SnCl4 + Sn --> 2SnCl2

Ok back to the subject at hand;
As we also know if free nitric is in solution some of the tin can also form mettastannic acid an oxide of tin that really does not dissolve in solution but forms a gelatinous substance (which I believe may further complicate the colloidal gold problem if in aqua regia), I am unsure how this would react in the aqua regia with the other reactions of colloidal gold, stannous chloride, stannic chlorides and possibly the other metals reducing.
3Sn + 4HNO3 --> H2SnO3 + 4NO (gas) mettastannic acid

Then if we just look at tin in aqua regia:
3Sn + 4HNO3 + 12HCl --> 3SnCl4 + 4NO (g) +8H2O

Stannous chloride will also kind of react with sulfur dioxide gas in highly acidic solutions to form toxic hydrogen sulfide gas:
2SnCl2 + SO2 (g) + 6H+ --> 3SnCl4 + H2S (g) + 2H2O

 

[solar_plasma]

Stannous chloride will also kind of react with sulfur dioxide gas in highly acidic solutions to form toxic hydrogen sulfide gas:
2SnCl2 + SO2 (g) + 6H+ --> 3SnCl4 + H2S (g) + 2H2O

but

Sn2+ + H2S => Sn(II)S + 2H+ (brown precipitate)

and

Sn4+ + 2H2S => Sn(IV)S2 + 4H+ (yellow precipitate)

both stated as quantitative in weak acid setting

would it be an equilbrium

in highly acidic solutions

or not occur at all? - that H2S-item just won't leave me :lol:


PS: thanks for sharing, butcher and Göran! Now, I absolutly understand, why we don't want tin to get in. It blows your mind.

 

[nickvc]

sir thank you for your reply but i have big problem is time as i work in hard job so i need some links to find what i need directly without search for that i contact you

I see English isn't your first language so I will try to make this reply simple.
The chemicals and acids you will need to use create some very dangerous fumes apart from the dangers of those same chemicals and acids themselves. We encourage new members to read so they become aware of those dangers and to realise just how complicated refining can be, particulary if you don't understand all the basic processes your going to have to use to extract the values successfully.
There is no simple way to explain all this you will have to read and study if want to be succesful and stay healthy. If you can't or will not do that studying you are going to be in trouble very quickly with lost values and mixes of various metals dissolved in acids with no idea of how to proceed and recover the values. This is one very big subject and potentially lethal without a proper understanding of what you are doing so either read or find another way to make money from those boards such as selling them to someone with the knowledge to extract the values.

 

[butcher]

Once we get all these chemicals reacting to make aqua regia we have several reaction's happening at once gases being formed in solution and gases leaving solution, now we put in one metal like gold and the reactions happening start getting more complicated, add some copper silver and other base metals, and other reactions, now tin and another chemical to precipitate gold and this begins to get even more complicated, we can write a few reactions of how one metal may react with one acid fairly easily, but once you begin mixing all of the reactions going on in the aqua regia, and start adding more metals and trying to figure what all of these gases acids and metals are doing I think you really cannot write all of the different formulas for the reactions, because every second it seems like something is changing, as the solution changes, and gases leave or change the or reactions come to completion and so on, in a way it is almost fruitless to try and write all of the different reactions that could happen, except to try and get at least a little understanding, or idea of what may be happening

In the reactions, and then of coarse when any amounts of the ingredients in this witches brew is changed in proportions it also changes what may be happening inside the pot.

solar_plasma, we can write these reactions (like I did with stannous chloride and SO2 gas, and like you did for the reactions you wrote), and stannous chloride as well as metastannic acid would form in aqua regia if tin was involved, but in reality, there are so very many reactions going on at once, things changing so much, gases leaving solution, acids being consumed and other metal salts being formed, we really cannot count on the single reaction formulas to really explain what is happening. Although they can help to give us some glimpses of what may be somewhat happening in solution, I really do not know how to explain this, I have had no training in chemistry, to me it is just a way to try to explain something the best we can of what might be happening, but in reality we do not know what all the different complicated reactions are doing or what all is really happening and when during the process of this kind.

kind of like I can explain how electrons travel in a wire, to try and say what is going on, although I cannot see the electrons, or what they are doing, I have never really seen one of those electrons, what I can see, though, is when I grab that wire it shocks me, well I can try to explain it in a formula, but then again, I truly only know one thing for sure, it hurts and burns my skin.

Sn2+ + H2S => Sn(II)S + 2H+ (brown precipitate)
If we had a mole of stannous chloride, and bubbled hydrogen sulfide gas through solution until a mole of H2S reacted, this is a possible reaction, but also among all of the other many reactions in the aqua regia going on at the same time, but then again the hydrogen sulfide could leave the solution as H2S gas before it reacted, or the H2S may react with something else in our gold chloride solution like gold, or some other more reactive element if very much of it even formed (remembering we should not have that much stannous chloride in our solution of aqua regia with our gold to begin with, and what stannous chloride is formed from tin in solution with our gold, will also reacting with so many other things at once, reducing gold oxidizing itself to a higher state reacting and with everything else in solution, including SO2,and of course there may not be excess SnCl2 in solution for it to react with the H2S that may also be trying to leave a solution as gas, to be able to form a precipitant of tin sulfide, the reaction as written Above, the way I see it and I think about it is the H2S was bubbled through a solution of stannous chloride (my guess a cold solution to keep the gas in long enough to react) ( under a fume hood of course because of the terribly noxious toxic gas used in the reaction written above), and then a sulfide of tin would precipitate out brown in color, but if we think of this reaction occurring in with aqua regia and our gold chloride solution in an constantly changing formula for aqua regia solution with all of the other things going on (inside that pot) I do not know if we would be able to find much tin sulfide salts in the bottom of the reaction vessel, but then again who knows really, it may just depend on how big of a mess we made?

What I do know is we just want to keep tin out of the solution with our gold,( and we do not have to understand all of these complicated formulas to see that our gold precipitates much better without tin stealing the gold from us). Tin just causes terrible problems, tin can react with many acids gases and solutions in many different ways, the chemistry of tin is also a very complicated subject, but if we really do not wish to complicate things, keeping tin out of our solution to begin with, just makes so much sense and is much easier to understand.

 

[butcher]

engbody83,
Your time right now is best spent on learning first.
There is a lot to learn and it will take some time, but it is not hard, and can be very fun, by studying it opens a whole new world of possibility's to you, many things you would miss or not know if you did not look, the forum is a real gold mine of information, and all you have to do is dig into it and find all of those precious nuggets, I can tell you a little thing of how you might get some gold off a piece of scrap, but there is no way I can tell you of all of the different types of scrap that have gold.

There is no way I could write a simple method that would work for you to be able to recover gold from the many sources available to you, or no way I can tell you how to refine the gold in simple posts.

There is no way I could warn you of all of the dangers involved, gases that could kill you by mixing some of the things we do, no way I could explain to you how you could kill those around you with your waste.

To learn all of these things you will just have to learn to be patient, take the time you need to learn and learn to study.

We can help you with all of your questions, so listen to me now.

Read Hoke's book (a very easy book to read), study it until you understand it.
(Free download available in book section or under many members’ posts)

Go to the safety section read "dealing with waste" and other safety topics.

Go to the general chat section follow the "guided tour" guide to the forum, see also the general reaction list.

I too am a very busy man, I also work, and I do not have much time, but if you are willing to learn and I can help I will, but I cannot just put what I know in your head, the only way is for you to begin working yourself to learn, putting in your time studying, and then when you have questions we here on the forum can help, and will be glad to help you.

So for now forget about getting gold (right now the only thing you know how to do is lose your gold and make a dangerous mess), take time to learn first, then you will be able to do anything you want to do safely.

You must also know this, the way you say you just want someone to tell you how to do this, without you yourself wanting to spend time learning, will not help you here, it will just hurt you,

If someone comes here with that kind of attitude, we see they really do not care enough to work hard to learn, and they will just waste every one else’s time here taking time from members who do wish to learn, and those who are working hard to learn, and if we see this attitude it will not go on long here, that member who does not wish to learn would lose his membership here to this wonderful forum full of information he was too lazy to find (or was not willing to do the hard work to find), the forum would be dragged down by him, we cannot help him, so he has no business here on the forum.

If you are a hard worker then you know anything of value takes hard work to get, if you do not work hard then you will get no value.

Actually study here is hard work, but it does get easier after you begin doing it for a while, and it is very fun at the same time, and it is always full of wonderful nuggets of golden information.

Man Up put on your work gloves get Hokes book and get busy learning.
It will be the easiest and first step to getting your gold.

 

[solar_plasma]

...just wanna add: Your cellphoneboards will not run away. Just collect everything with precious content you can get. It's a lot more fun to work with gramms than with milligramms. It will be easier to find the precious metals in the filters and to melt them. Your losses will be less. And it's quite exiting step by step to discover along with reading, learning and researching what there is to get from all your scrap treasures. I'm quite no dummy, but my cellphone boards are still waiting, because I know they are more special than much other stuff, which I first want to master. Mastering an item means for me, that I am (beside all basic knowledge) able to use different processes and get near as much gold with a near as high purity as someone like butcher would get. And often I believe that I have done enough research, but the practice teaches me something different. Then I read again to find out, what I have misunderstood or underestimated. And I maybe already go a more stony road, than the wise masters would advise. If I would have known this forum earlier, I believe,I would have made 3g instead of 2,3g gold and as a matter of fact, I would not have burned 20g silver up in the air and only have 30g silverpowder left. Listen to them and you will succeed.

@butcher
I've just taken my next batch and took everything, that not were clean gold on copper to an extra batch, that will be processed later after dissolving the basemetals. I have learned how important it ist to keep the system simple. Thank you for that great patience you have!

 

[butcher]

I also am learning, just like you guys are learning, (here on the forum even the professional refiners learn something new), I am no professional, I make many mistakes, and try to learn what I can from them also, I also learn form others here, trying to understand what they are saying and doing, I have been able to learn a few little things, but I still myself have so very much to learn, I also need to refine my processes, and work to get more understanding, I spend time on the forum learning not only from the more experienced members on the forum, but I also learn from those who are doing different things than I have been working on, and I learn as they explain what they are trying to learn, I learn from all of the members here on the forum, even the new members teach me things here.

one way to get a better understanding is to work with higher grade materials with less problems than the materials with many different metals at once, this helps to give you an understanding also of how things should work, many times new members only work with the more troublesome mixes like electronic scrap full of problems at every turn, dealing with scrap that really has very little gold, but many troublesome metals, and in doing this they do not see how things work,or how they can work with better grade materials.

lets just take an example here, of dissolving pure gold powder in aqua regia, there can be problems even with the simplest of methods in the process, using too much acids, or too much nitric, and with details of the simple process of removing free nitric, testing it, and precipitating the gold, and how much chemicals to use, and washing it properly, so even this simple process has many details we need to learn.

But if with try to begin leaning this process on scrap electronics with dozens of metals oils and other trash involved, and also we did not learn the simple problems of the details needed in the (process above of dissolving pure gold in aqua regia), we have just added a thousand more problems to the mix, that would make it even harder to figure out what is going wrong.
Add to that a basketful of the many details of simple things we could do wrong, or do not understand yet, and we just have a recipe for disaster, so many problems in solution, it may be harder for us to learn just what it is that went wrong, or what we did wrong, as we may have just done so many things wrong we may not be able to see them all.

This is where doing small experiments with more pure metals and materials, can help us get a better understanding of what may be happening in the more complicated solutions or processes.

solar_plasma, you may have much more experience than I do (you probably have more experience in chemistry or schooling in it), but yours and my experience is just with different things, this does not make either of us smarter or more experienced than the other, we just have different experiences, and may be able to see a few things differently, and we both can learn from each other, by helping each other from our experience, or the things we have or are learning.

 

[solar_plasma]

....well..here in germany specialists like engineers would say:...teachers can do everything, - but nothing for real :lol: there is a bit truth in it.

 

[butcher]

Solar plasma,
I think as you gain the skills it will just give more meaning to that teaching.

One thing I love to show people is the equations for silver, dissolved in HNO3 to form a clear solution of AgNO3. Then show them this clear liquid that looks like water, ask them if they see silver in it, then show and explain the equation's for precipitating the silver, mix up another metal salt NaCl dissolving all of the salt to a clear solution looking like water, ask them if they see the metal in the salt water, then show them what happens when we mix the two clear solutions, AgNO3 + NaCl to form a white precipitant of silver chloride, in a clear solution of dissolved sodium nitrate which can be used to fertilize flowers, also show the reaction using HCl to precipitate silver chloride and forming a weak solution of HNO3 which will attack copper, and (also show them the HCl alone would not attack copper) explain why. Then show the reaction for cementing the silver with copper collecting and washing the silver cement, explain why solution turned blue with copper nitrate, melt the silver cement back to a small button and hand it to them to keep, tell them this is the metal they could not see in the clear liquid, spark there interest in learning more, if that is their interest who knows you may have helped someone want to learn more about the science of chemistry of metals.

Personally in my opinion the best teachers inspire to learn, they cannot teach someone, or make them learn, but they can inspire an interest in the person to generate questions in his mind, the person learns by finding answers to those questions which drives him to learn more, so a good teacher is one who cares, inspires one to question, and then shows him how he can find answers to his questions. not just teaching him math with dead numbers, doing countless formulas to get a correct answer, but then not really understanding what the formula means or how to use it, to me understanding the formula, and how to use it is much more important than getting the right number in the problem of that formula, understanding how to use the formula is more important than the answer or correct number, anyone can learn to plug numbers in and get the correct number out, but very few really learn how to use the formula to get answers in another situation they are working on.

 

[engbody83]

"I see English isn't your first language so I will try to make this reply simple."

yes sir its not my first language am egyption and thank you very much for your advice and i will learn first



and for mr butcher thank you very much for your help and your advice and i will listen to your words good and i will study hard and i hope god help me



but the two persons who are answer me at first no need for your replay as you can help any one as by your reply method you make me Alienate
thank you very much

 

[solar_plasma]

but the two persons who are answer me at first no need for your replay

I count five other persons.....talking to ME? :shock: Begging your pardon, but I am answering seriously when I want, who I want, whatever I want, unless any admin asks me not to do so.