Merged Topics on Ceramic CPU Recovery with Yields

[Geo]

the sample was broad.the first photo in the post above.not sure as to the cause but the effect was definite reaction with the white portion between the two ceramic layers. it didnt dissolve but more of fell apart. its still mixed with the silver chloride powder but the two white substances is very different. the silver is pasty and mushy and the white substrate is gritty and course. i havent tried to separate with mesh but i did consider it. the next batch i do, i will document with pictures and post them.

 

[samuel-a]

Nice videos! Just curious, but why don't you do an initial leach with hot HCL?

Acid_Bath76

It is my opinion the the material is rich enough to run straight in AR, considering the BM present.
Also, the plating of old ceramic is quite thick (ulike with new fiber type) and is effectively distubing the penetration of acid down to BM, slowing the reaction.

I have tried before, boiling a cpu in HCl alone and in Nitric alone... it took several good hours to get rid of most of BM, therefore my opinoin is to just do it all in one dissolution step.

Some, may prefer it otherwaise and that's fine, the good old saying never dies: there's more then one way to skin a cat.

 

[philddreamer]

I skin my cat like you skin yours Sam! :mrgreen:

One must keep in mind that we are either, recovering or refining.
Now, some members prefer to add extra steps in their process, in order to end up with higher purity.

After running 2 test batches of 6 Pentium Pro's, the first thru HCl, then AR, I found that the HCl did very little to get rid of BM's, (the acid didn't even change color), so I just added nitric & finished the recovery.
I proceeded with the second batch of 6 Pentium Pro's running them first thru 50/50 nitric. This got rid of some BM's, (very little), and the rinsing of the ceramics I found too tedious. I felt I just wasted some of my time...

I, like Samuel, prefer to run the material from the beginning thru AR; the amount of BM's is minimal, (in the P-Pro's), to affect the recovery, thus making the task simpler. (There're more details to the processes).

Phil

 

[cnbarr]

I recently ran a batch of AMD athelon/durons ceramic cpus through AR for recovery and quickly learned it was a bad idea for these type of cpus. I ended up will a pile of rusty looking goo, I was still able to recover my values, but it was much more work.

With my Pentiums and 386/486 I haven't yet had a
Problem running them directly in AR.

 

[philddreamer]

That's true Cnbarr; I also ran a batch of the newer ceramics, thru AR & ended up with a similar mess.
Then I tried another batch thru HCl first & the acid turned very dark. I then rinsed & ran thru AR & it was a better ending. Any silver drops as the solution cools, lead drops with some sulphuric & the left over with Pd goes to the stock pot.
Again, I'm just recovering the gold. If I want the gold finer, I just run it a second time thru AR.

The newer ceramics cpu's should go thru HCl or nitric first, (I prefer HCl), in order to get rid of some of the junk. The idea of running thru diluted nitric is to remove the silver, Pd & other base metals... but I find that having to deal with the time of rinsings & silver chloride left over, I rather not use nitric.

Take care!

Phil

 

[cnbarr]

Hi Phil,
I agree as well, I ran another couple of batches of AMD's one with an HCL bath and one with a dilute Nitric bath to start and got very similar results in the end. The nitric works faster, but you have more time in rinsing, HCl is a bit slower and less rinses. So for others I suppose it would come down to time and chemical cost, I get nitric fairly cheap so it is sixes for me.

I found most ceramic cpu's each have a slight variance in the method used to process them, depending on the age and type; I always try to separate them by brand and type, so I don't run into a rouge cpu that might cause problems if I decide to go straight to AR with no per-processing.

Happy Friday everyone

That's true Cnbarr; I also ran a batch of the newer ceramics, thru AR & ended up with a similar mess.
Then I tried another batch thru HCl first & the acid turned very dark. I then rinsed & ran thru AR & it was a better ending. Any silver drops as the solution cools, lead drops with some sulphuric & the left over with Pd goes to the stock pot.
Again, I'm just recovering the gold. If I want the gold finer, I just run it a second time thru AR.

The newer ceramics cpu's should go thru HCl or nitric first, (I prefer HCl), in order to get rid of some of the junk. The idea of running thru diluted nitric is to remove the silver, Pd & other base metals... but I find that having to deal with the time of rinsings & silver chloride left over, I rather not use nitric.

Take care!

Phil

 

[philddreamer]

You too have a good one! 8)

Phil

 

[radhindanoes]

Great tutorial! It will definitely help me a lot!

I saw that at part 1 of the video, you inspect the broken CPU's because there was still left over gold on it. This will go on the next batch, like you said. Would it work if I grind the CPU's to a powder-like substance at the beginning and then do the AR process? I would think that there would be no next batch if it was grounded into a powder with a ball mill or something. However, please correct me if I am wrong.

 

[glondor]

Hey Phil, Cnbarr, Tell us more about the rusty looking goo. How did you work thru it? did you figure out what it is? I have a 3 pound batch that has gone "goo". I always supposed the goo was dirty cement copper and a small addition of nitric would clear it up, in this case however it does not. Please do tell if you have a remedy! Cheers Mike

 

[philddreamer]

Rad, I'm sure you now understand better our comments to your post:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=12780#p127602

There're big differences in the types, yields & methods of processing the ceramic cpu's. 8)

Take care!
Phil

P.S. Glondor, I'll make some comments on the matter at
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=12631#p125850
in order to keep the information in one post & making easier to find; also, that way not clogging Samuel's post on processing CPU's.

 

[cnbarr]

Hey Phil, Cnbarr, Tell us more about the rusty looking goo. How did you work thru it? did you figure out what it is? I have a 3 pound batch that has gone "goo". I always supposed the goo was dirty cement copper and a small addition of nitric would clear it up, in this case however it does not. Please do tell if you have a remedy! Cheers Mike

Hi glondor how is your day,

My rusty goo (I wonder if "goo" is in a scientific dictionary?) came from 2# of ceramic AMD athelon/duron cpu's, so I am pretty sure (from what I researched) it was iron from the pins. After the nitric in my AR was used up, a stannous test showed slight positive for gold, even though the vast majority was still undissolved. I carefully empty the solution and the rusty goo (paying close attention not to pour off any gold pins) into a fresh beaker and and rinsed the cpu's with minimal water. I then added a fresh 100ml of HCl to the new beaker with the goo, heated, then small additions of nitric till it all dissolved. With the cpu's I added fresh AR to finish them up.

I then diluted the goo solution by 35% with water and added a touch of sulfuric acid to drop out any lead, then filtered. When I precipitated the beaker with the rusty mass, I do not think I got more than a 1/20g of gold powder, which tells me most if any values that may have dissolved were cemented back out. From cpu's with the fresh AR I precipitated about 1.8g, so based on my calculated expected yield, I was only off by -2/10g.

I do not know if this was the best procedure, but it worked in my situation. These type of cpu's will definitely get a hot HCl or nitric bath for pretreatment from now on.
I hope this helps,
Chris

 

[glondor]

Thanks Chris. I will do some more work with these today. I do not know what type of ceramics these were as they were ground to 1/4" minus as received.

The learning curve on escrap is steep for sure when everything is requiring the development of a new method and understanding. Having access to this kind of information on this forum is truly fantastic. It is a shame so many are trying to run roughshod through it here recently. Where else can you find this kind of info....( sorry, minor rant )

I will try your method as I have already set the solution to filter out the goo. Goo is a good scientific term as a descriptor as it conjures the same image to most in the mind. :lol:

 

[samuel-a]

It's easy enough to create stubborn iron rust, maybe not enough solution used?

Never had any difficulties with ceramic AMD's...

 

[glondor]

Thanks Sam. That may be the issue. I guestimated 10 - 15 % by weight as metal and added solution accordingly. I increased the amount when I was not getting the desired results. I thought I added an excess but perhaps I was wrong. I did not want to over do the nitric as it causes trouble later. I have isolated the goo and will do small additions of A\R and see if it reacts.

 

[philddreamer]

You know, I came to the conclusion a couple of days ago that, that is most likely what happened with my black chips leaving a brown sediment. I added plenty of HCl & nitric & it changed to a greenish color & no brown sediment, but the test shows Pd. Only .6g of gold I've recovered so far.
I'm placing all the solution in a bucket for cementing.

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Thanks Sam. That may be the issue. I guestimated 10 - 15 % by weight as metal and added solution accordingly. I increased the amount when I was not getting the desired results. I thought I added an excess but perhaps I was wrong. I did not want to over do the nitric as it causes trouble later. I have isolated the goo and will do small additions of A\R and see if it reacts.

If you have enough solution make 3 batches if you want to. Use your AR on one test, just add HCL in your 2nd test, and in your 3rd test try peroxide.

 

[glondor]

Hey Barren, Missed your post last night. I added A/R to the solution and heated. It did clear up some but not all. It does seem an extreme excess of A/R. I will see what is the result a bit later today when I get to the lab. I hope it worked... Why Peroxide?

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Hey Barren, Missed your post last night. I added A/R to the solution and heated. It did clear up some but not all. It does seem an extreme excess of A/R. I will see what is the result a bit later today when I get to the lab. I hope it worked... Why Peroxide?

I used small aounts of peroxide in a similar situation and it worked to clear up the solution.

 

[samuel-a]

So... Me and Phil have been exchanging some of our findings in regards to the ceramics cpu's process.

Before, i was quite convinced that there is no gold within the ceramic substrate.... :shock: I guess... just because i can't see it, doesn't mean it ain't there !

As a habit, I'm saving all of the bits and pieces of the processed ceramics and accumulated many pounds of them. So i took some of it, an re-processed it with hot dilute A/R, the results were quite disappointing (but somewhat expected), only very faint gold stain with SnCl2.
Later, I dried this same batch and broke every piece into few smaller ones and again into hot dilute A/R.... boy was i surprised to see the color of the solution and SnCl2 test...


Though, i still think powdering the ceramics will be counteractive, i reckon the suggestion to brake the ceramics into very small pieces is spot on and will give much better results in terms of yields.
A good crushing size will probably be somewhere under 0.2 inches...

So... crush 'em...

 

[Geo]

great info. i have a few pounds myself i will need to go back over. thanks.