Medium scale I guess.

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A

autocontrolit

Member
Joined
Jan 6, 2014
Messages
5
Hey guys,

I am new here obviously. I have an Industrial equipment/parts recycling company, been in business for 7+ years. Been lurking on here a few days soaking up information.

I have been selling my scrap boards for a while, wait till I get a ton or so then sell them. I would like to process those boards myself, looking to buy or build equipment to do it on a scale of about 1 ton in an 8 hour day. Is anybody on here refining on that scale and if so where can I buy equipment. Primarily reaction/Scrubbing equipment. Milling, conveying, sort equipment I have mostly in stock or can build myself.

I have built a few of Bio Diesel Plants processing between 4-16 million gallons a year. Seems to be a lot more information available in that field which is amazing considering the horrible margins in that industry.

I have found equipment available for sale, but mostly over seas Turkey, Israel, Singapore etc. After an incident purchasing Bio Diesel equipment from a European country I would rather not go through that again, I would like to buy in the US. I would also love any information available on yields from different processes not coming from the vendor.

Thank you,

Shawn Maynard
Industrial Reuse LLC
 
How do you want to process the boards? As I see it, these, or a combination of these, are your main choices. There's a lot more detail I could give but this should give you the general idea.

(1) Incinerate Boards - Ball Mill - Screen - Melt Metal - Sample Metal Bars & Ash - Fire Assay - Ship to Refiner (usually in Europe). The bars can be broken down electrolytically but that's harder than it looks.
Pros: If you ship everything, no Chemicals needed - Honest Yields - Process fast, easy, cheaper less labor
Cons: Takes a month or more to get paid - incinerator must be licensed - incinerating is the big ticket item

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(2) Shred boards - separate into plastic, copper, aluminum, etc. with separating equipment, such as, magnetic, eddy current, flotation, etc.
Pros: Green - Can also sell the plastic and everything else -
Cons: Expensive equipment - You still have to do something with the gold - This method is easier said than done

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(3) Cherrypick boards and either sell the various materials or process them yourself. The remaining boards still have some values and can be sold.
Pros: Get the PM's fairly fast -
Cons: High Labor - Lots of chemicals and equipment - fumes - If selling the parts, much have assay equipment -

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(4) Any one of several schemes to dissolve the base metals on the boards with chemicals, things like copper chloride/hydrochloric acid, weak Sulfuric acid/hydrogen peroxide. Then, dissolve the gold.
Pros: ?
Cons: Need good fume control - Moderate labor - big tanks - hard to get all the goodies
 
The process as I would imagine it would be similar to the attached image. I can buy all of the equipment, get all of the chemicals, but the reaction equipment is what I am having difficulty locating. I guess I could probably build my own, but I am not familiar enough with the process yet to do so.

EPA permitting doesn't scare me like I said I have built a few Bio Diesel plants, even a couple of waste water treatment plants. I want to do it all in house including the refining.

Money is not an issue on this project, with the exception of ROI.
 

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Shawn.

I'm a UK based company. If you want any help of someone to check out deals over here before you buy then feel free to contact me.

Don't write it all off over here, there are idiots over here as much as over there.

Jon
 
Jon,

Thanks, but if I can I will stay state side if possible. The last incident cost $475,000 courtesy of BioKing, thankfully it wasn't my money. If there is an issue it would be easier not dealing in international courts.

Shawn Maynard
 
Shawn I'm going to admit I think your aiming for the stars here, most so called board refiners only get to the dore bar stage and then ship to the copper refiners the exception I know of been Umicore who are a big base metal refiner anyway. If you could set up as far as getting dore bars for shipping you may well find business here on the forum if you can give good honest returns but getting even to that stage I believe will cost millions and to then set up a copper refinery to run just your own bars will be cost prohibitive, this is why even big companies sell to the big copper refiners, bear in mind the bars produced are not well suited to electrolytic cells due to their make up, all materials for cells needs to be 95%+ to allow the cells to run effectively and without almost constant attention.
We have a member in the UAE, Kevin, who is trying to do just this and perhaps his posts will give you some ideas but as GSP pointed out the incineration unit is the big ticket item especially with the rules applied by environmental agencies these days.
We do have several members who could perhaps professionally advise you as to your needs and where to find the correct equipment at the right price but you would have to post asking for such help, my opinion it will not be cheap but it could be a lot cheaper than buying useless or ineffective kit.
 
Guys unless I am missing something here. I can pick up an incinerator capable of 2000 lb load with an after burner to guarantee clean emissions to meet EPA standards for under $30,000. Hammer Mill, Ball Mill and Grinder we can build on site in my Fab shop. Conveyors and separation have everything on site already, including a 15KW electromagnet for separation. I have built plenty of heat treat and sintering furnaces, have everything on site to build the smelting furnace.

The only pieces of the puzzle I am missing is some sort of reaction chamber, scrubber for the reaction portion of the process and from what I am seeing now the process to finish the dore bars. Not too big of deal to ship out the bars for final processing, if that is what I have to do. I wanted though to finish these my self and just keep the pm on site as a "savings account" though. I can't really see spending more than $150,000 to get to the dore bar stage at 1 ton/day processing level?

Please correct me if I am wrong on this. Of course I will have to deal with the EPA on emissions and permitting, but that is easy enough they are across the street from me. Am I really over simplifying it too much?

Shawn
 
If you can source a good incinerator your half way there in my opinion, but I'd check it will be up to the needed standard for emissions, boards emit some fairly noxious fumes so be careful.
Your ability to assemble the rest of the kit inhouse will be a great advantage and should allow to to tailor the designs to your actual needs not to what's available.
In house melting will be essential and if you intend to ship the dore bars on an assay facility would be more than useful even if the refiners won't accept your assays, you can keep samples for a referee assay if necessary, but at least you have a good idea of what your shipping.
Because most of the metal in computer scrap is copper refining any other way but electrolytically would be a nightmare, noxx fumes and acid costs would soon be a problem. The big problem with the bars I think would be their copper content which would be under the ideal percentage to run through the cells so either they would need lots more copper adding or just ship them.
When you incinerate the boards the ash portion contains values so that would need assaying and again shipment on.
This isn't rocket science but there are challenges that need addressing especially the environmental ones as they could completely shut you down and possibly worse, make sure before you buy anything it's up to the standard they want and try and allow for tighter restrictions which will. I doubt be there in the future.
I wish you luck and look forward to seeing your progress.
 
You can likely get an incinerator in the $30K range but its capacity for burning circuit boards will be much less in pounds per hour than 2000 pound batches you are hoping for. I've owned my fair share of incinerators and while units rated for 2000 pounds per hour would do well on jewelry sweeps or brushes and wheels and other items which burned well. Those same incinerators were woefully inadequate with boards. Unless you want to go the multiple second retention time afterburners followed by a bag-house you will have compliance issues. So despite what the manufacturers say, get some written performance guarantees included.

I once had a rotary incinerator which was capable of burning sink sludges at the rate of 2000+ pounds per hour at which it performed admirably. When we had circuit boards to process we were lucky to get 500 pounds a day. And that was by keeping one eye on the roof camera so we could see the stack.

With copper in the $3 plus range, producing copper based bullion bars and processing your own copper cells is definitely a cost effective venture if you can come up with scrap copper at a reasonable price. If the copper production can bear the brunt of the processing costs, all of the PM's in the slimes are gravy.
 
Ok so the largest hurdle is the noxious vapors generated by the destruction of the boards as well as the amount of energy required to break them down. As I am researching correct me if I am wrong but are most boards built from fiberglass using polyester resin which is what creates the nox and requires the energy?
 
NOx I believe would come more from the air used to burn the fuel, nitrogen in air and oxygen form the NOx gases, the circuit boards would have many toxic gases, and toxic ash, from incineration.

http://www.electronicsrecycling.com/UserDocuments/5windshazmat%20study.pdf

http://www.springerplus.com/content/pdf/2193-1801-2-521.pdf
 

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