Merged Topics on Ceramic CPU Recovery with Yields

[Chumbawamba]

 

[rainmaker]

As to removing fingers, I use a pair of heavy poultry scissors. Good control and nice clean job.

The drawback is your hand may get tired or sore from repeated use until you get use to it and your hand mussels get strengthened.

I'm able to sit on the sofa in my living room, while watching the "**** tube" and trim fingers most of the eavening without getting cold or wet.

Rainmaker

 

[ilanpro]

How do you do this??

[*]Filter through packed funnel under vacuum until 100% free of sediment and suspended particles.

 

[lazersteve]

A packed funnel is just a glass or plastic funnel, I prefer glass as some plastics dissolve with acids, with folded toilet paper plug or glass wool in the neck. Fold the paper and roll it up so no rough edges are exposed and finish up the roll with a fold lengthwise 1/3 of the way down the roll.

The drip rate need to be about 2-3 drops per 5 seconds to keep the flow going. Test the packing with plain water before using on precious metals containing solutions. If the drip rate is too fast particles with get through, too slow and you'll be waiting days for the filtering to finish.

Vacuum filtration uses standard chemistry glass ware and flasks to filter with a vacuum assist.

I demonstrate all these and more filtering techniques on my Platinum DVD.

Steve

 

[Anonymous]

Hi..am new here and am trying to determine the refined gold yield in grams per ceramic Pentium Pro chip. I am talking about the large classic ceramic gold topped variety which have two procesors inside them and not the earlier AMD versions which seem to have been the topic or dispute of earlier debates on this forum. I have read everything evryone has posted about this subjet but note a lot of parsing of words and splitting of hairs going on here and no one really giving a reliable answer to the question of yield for these kinds of chips and so am still not certain what the answer is since I read a lot of hear say, rough estimates or references to precise tests on earlier parts made by AMD that used the same part name during a trade name dispute with Intel, etc.... Does anyone have any precise up to date data on test yields on the kind of Pentium chips I am referring to? I know what i am getting out of them but want to make sure that I am not leaving anything behind and if there is any further way to maximize refined yield.? All info is appreciated. Also curious to know if there is any silver content in these chips that could affect or inhibit gold precipitation during the Sodium Metabisulfite phase. Thanks JR

 

[glorycloud]

Here's a thought, why not post what you are getting out of them and let the experts
let you know how you are doing so far. In doing so, you will also pass along to others
what could possibly be the accurate data you are wanting. 8)

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your response but that does not really answer the question. However If you have this information or know someone who might and if indeed this forum is dedicated to sharing info and helping others make good decisions please let me know who one might contact directly to obtain the answer: The question being has anyone performed controlled accurate empirical refines to determine how much refined gold under optimal conditions may be recovered from an Intel Pentium Pro chip? Thanks for your assistence.

 

[glorycloud]

Somehow, I knew you would choose to not divulge any information. 8)

If I had any info on these chips I would through it out for all to see.
This is a forum - a "for us" environment. For whatever reasons it can and does devolve
into a "for me" place as well.

Oh well, sail on amigo - sail on!

 

[patnor1011]

Thank you for your response but that does not really answer the question. However If you have this information or know someone who might and if indeed this forum is dedicated to sharing info and helping others make good decisions please let me know who one might contact directly to obtain the answer: The question being has anyone performed controlled accurate empirical refines to determine how much refined gold under optimal conditions may be recovered from an Intel Pentium Pro chip? Thanks for your assistence.

there are about 50 people here who can give you their numbers. they will be different as they pursue different routes for refining with various results. unfortunately there is probably nobody here performing "controlled accurate empirical refines to determine how much refined gold under optimal conditions may be recovered from whatever you choose to refine". even if you will find somebody doing this there will be problem to obtain the same numbers as we work in different locations, set-ups, chemicals, chips...............
I noticed range from 0.5 to 0.75 on some of steves posts and it is enough for me. When I will be on 0.5 it means that I might be loosing some values somewhere and on the other hand when close to 0.75 I will be happy with how good I am.
btw your question raising another questions. please define "controlled accurate empirical refines " and "under optimal conditions "

 

[Harold_V]

Thank you for your response but that does not really answer the question. However If you have this information or know someone who might and if indeed this forum is dedicated to sharing info and helping others make good decisions please let me know who one might contact directly to obtain the answer: The question being has anyone performed controlled accurate empirical refines to determine how much refined gold under optimal conditions may be recovered from an Intel Pentium Pro chip? Thanks for your assistence.

Funny----the response by glorycloud seems to have pegged you dead on. You appear reluctant to tip your hand, for reasons best known by you. I don't see that as a good way to introduce yourself to the board. It certainly isn't endearing you to me, making it quite obvious you intend to use and abuse the board, offering nothing in return. I hope I'm wrong with my assessment. Understand that we are a free giving bunch here, but if you come to pick brains and contribute nothing, it won't be long until no one will be willing to talk to you.

Now then, perhaps you'd like to rephrase your inquiry and talk to the readers in such a way that you will gain their respect.

If that is not in your plans, perhaps you can take your dog and pony show elsewhere.

Harold

 

[Anonymous]

An ideal test situation: As would be carried out in a fully equiped, experienced and professional laboratory setting where one could assure that that the results would be consistant within +- 1% and that at least 99% of the existing gold could be recaptured and also after tallying the mean results of a half a dozen refines on the same type of product and with no spills, wastage, consistant measurements of processing chemicals used and post tests to assure that nothing is left in solution, etc... In other words a lab setting where the operators could state after the fact and within a 99% percent certainty that 99% of the existing gold had been recovered from the chip. Only then, could one be comfortable to state with high probability that a certain chip type or product contains on average x ammount and no more and no less...etc.

In another life many years ago I ran a chip mounting and gold wire bonding and ceramic package sealing and environmental test lab operation at Harris Semiconductor back in the early 80 s where I worked as shift supervisor over 60 proles and we inspected in clean room and then mounted the chips with gold solder into the ceramic cases, wire bound them with gold wire as fine as spider webbing thenand oven sealed the gold plated lids on and I can tell you that the tolerances, especially for Mil-spec parts, were very tight and variations of .25 grams of gold between parts of the same type did not exist nor would have even been tolerated since everything was computer controlled and the military was extemely tight on watching us and maintaining strict applications and audits at every level. I doubt if .0005 variances of the metal applied even existed given the digital levels of computer accuracy and daily calibrations of all processes. With commercial parts it was a little more loose but even then not to within the range of the refined gold(.50-.75) reported recovered by various contributors on this forum.

In my own three home lab tests of 6 pros each time, simply simply shattered with two or three hammer blows and then submerged in a nylon mesh bag in a quart of aqua regia overnight, I am barely recovering 3 grms pure gold post crucible.

Granted, my acetelyne cutting torch might be the wrong thing to use for melting and I suspect I might be blowing dust and even melted globules away since I weigh 8 or 10 dried grams of brown powder and end up with 3 grams of gold, so I have ordered a rose bud torch to see if that makes a difference. I have not been pulverizing the chips to powder either before placing them in the AR...although I am not sure if changing torches and pulverzing everything pre bath will raise my yield significantly either? A fellow in China wrote me he is getting 1 gram per pro chip but he is also using zinc dust to precipitate with instead of Sodium meta-bisulfite which is what I am using. After neutralizing one quart of AR with urea and adding 50 % volume in distilled water before shotting about 3 or 4 tea spoons of hot dissolved SMB into it, within 10 minutes I am getting a nice brown sprinkle of fall out and after about an hour that seems to be about it. No matter what I do after that I can not seem to squeeze anymore brown precipitant out of the clean pale green solution I have generated and so I do not know if I have gotten it all or if more is just locked inside and will not come out???. I then decant my solution to another big beaker and wash the brown residue remaining in the bottom of the first beaker about six times in distilled water then filter it off and dry it atop the filter paper and weigh it and make a note in my book. I then roll it in two sheets of toilet paper, dip the squib in alcohol and place it atop a bed of boric acid crystal flux in my crucible and heat it up until I see the glowing little bead rolling around in the flux. I then pour if off quickly into a container of cold water and take out my little gold marbles. Sometimes a silver colored marble comes out also which is composed of a very dense, heavy and white silver metal which will not mix with the gold and I have recovered about 1/3 as many of those nuggets alongside the gold ones. (not sure what they are though...paladium?)

Before placing my 6 hammer broken pro chips in the AR I weigh them and have 1 lb 2.5 oz of material. Post AR I rinse/ soak in bicarbonate solution for an hour and sun dry before physically touching them again and then weigh what is left of the chips. After AR I find that I have only 1 lb .40 oz of materal left...all ceramic except for the shattered glass processors inside which are still golden and which I have no idea how to extract the gold from.

This means that 65.31 grams of metal, or just over 2 oz of metal that was inside those chips has dissolved in the AR. Granted, a lot of that is probably the copper pins, etc....but to only get about 3 grams of gold out of all that which has dissolved is disturbing and I believe that the rest of it, or another 3-4 grams of gold is still trapped in solution along with the other 60 remaining grams of missing dissolved metal. Any thoughts on where I am loosing gold? Still in solution, not pulverizing the chips first or the wrong blow torch or something else I am missing altogether? Thanks JR

I would also like to believe like the China man says that there is 1 gram refinable in each of these pentium pro chips but right now I would also be happy just to increase my yield to .75. Thanks JR

 

[qst42know]

Granted, my acetelyne cutting torch might be the wrong thing to use for melting and I suspect I might be blowing dust and even melted globules away since I weigh 8 or 10 dried grams of brown powder and end up with 3 grams of gold,

:shock:

If you need someone to clean your shop give me a call. I'll bring my own vacuum. :mrgreen:

Any thoughts on where I am loosing gold?

Base metals out first.

Nylon should be kept out of acid.

All crushed material gets included.

Evaporate to eliminate nitric acid.

Precipitation from dirty solutions can take much longer than an hour.

Don't rush the melt process.

Stannous chloride test the solution.

Slow down, I suspect you are loosing gold at each step of your processing.

 

[g_axelsson]

If you want to test your process start with a known amount of gold and copper. Then dissolve it, drop it from the solution, wash, dry, weigh the powder, melt and finally weigh the final button. If you lose gold in your process (or rather misplace it) then you will know.

My guess is that you are losing your gold when melting.

/Göran

 

[mike.fortin]

jruth. let soultion sit 30 days then chek to see if more brown falls down. if it dose youll know gold is lockup in soultion. good luck.mike.

 

[teabone]

Pentium pros usually average out to around .525 gram of gold each , from my own recovery endeavors. I don't have a fancy set up and I am really just a backyard chemist , but I have processed hundreds of pounds of these types.

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for your responses. Like the pieces of a big puzzles the parts are beginning to take shape into a coherent image.

While I think I know what most of you are saying and appreciate that you are being generous with your wisdom, remember I am but a novice so do not assume that I necessarily understand specifically what you are referring to all the time. Thus, I also appreciate your patience if it may seem to anyone that I ask questions with seemingly obvious answers. Also, reticence to reveal oneself at first was more of a factor of not wanting to appear to strangers like a total clod than anything else and, apart from providing an entertainment value to the seasoned veterans, I probably do not have a great deal of knowledge specific to this matter to contribute back to this forum at this stage of my career in this form of business. At least not much that anyone reading this does not already know. 30 years ago I was also a high school teacher and so I also understand and appreciate the nuturing and imparting of knowledge that goes along with learning.

Meanwhile I am still looking to structure and abide by the most efficient, productive and economically rewarding process for doing this and appreciate further counseling. Specifically there are a few terms and references that were passed to me for which I need more practical understanding for application and I thank anyone who could further elaborate.

1)) It was mentioned that one "must first remove the base metals"---nothing else elaborated. Ok..if this is going to be like a seminar of discovery...then correct me if I am wrong as I explore, read more on my own and fish around for the right answers. Anyway, what I think that the person is telling me is that before putting any of the hammer smashed pro material directly into the AR solution as I have been doing, that instead I must first place finely crushed pentium pro chip material into a nitric acid bath to dissolve all non auric and non platinum group metals? Then, I assume but correct me if I am wrong, after the nitric acid is drawn off that the gold flotsam and bottom sludge and what is left of the crushed chips--and after being rinsed a few times in distilled water--- is what only should be dropped into the AR rather than the entire chip with all its copper plated pins and what ever else kinds of base metals that are in it? Otherwise just been striking my pros with a few hammer blows, placing them in a string nylon mesh bag with string left hanging outside of bucket and tossing them in the AR. The bag, by the way...has kept all of the big pieces together while allowing the acid to disolve everything inside it while the bag itself has not suffered any decay or damage. It just seemed a safer way to keep the stuff contained and then remove it from the AR when done.

2. Is what I was producing by putting the smashed pro chip directly into the AR also what was referred to by someone as a "dirty solution.?" My question regarding that reference: Is the word "dirty" referring to the presence of dissolved base metals in the soup or a reference to a solution that has visible muck and trash floating around in it? My AR solution was by all accounts, at least to the naked eye, visually and pleasingly clean looking---a nice clear green hue like lime Gatorade with nothing else visibly floating around in it. I also decanted and filtered it into another white bucket prior to neutralizing it with urea and using SMBS to precipite the gold brown stuff. To filter I poured the solution through a .75 micron, 5 gallon bucket filter to catch any ceramic splinters and other chip stuff that had dropped out of the chips while they were cooking overnight in the AR. However, I also realize that we are dealing with molecular chemistry and so one technician's definition of "dirt" and "dirty" might not be immediately understandable to the uninitiated ***** like me since dirt can also be microscopic or more like contamination wih other dissolved materials and thus not visible to the eye. Anyway, please elaborate on a definition of "dirty solution" and how best to remedy or have I already figured it out? . Thanks .

 

[Oz]

JRuth,

Reading your latest post it seems that you are starting “to get it”. There is no point in posing on this forum or to use your words “not wanting to appear to strangers like a total clod”.

There are those on this forum that have fancy degrees that are not the best at applying their education to some of the questions asked. Then there are some that have a high school degree or less, that know more about refining because they have done it for 20 years or more for a living, not just having read a procedure.

Spend a little time investing in some of the links like on Lazersteve’s name or general reading of the forum. Once you think you understand something that you wish to try, ask about that line item. Even if someone wished to give you the Holy Grail it is not that simple. It does take some effort.

It is understandable that you wished to hide your results if you felt they were less than satisfactory. In the same view it should be clear to you that without full disclosure there is little help or input anyone here could give.

One asking for help must first acknowledge they do not have all the answers.

 

[qst42know]

First I'll apologize if the brevity of my post came across as offensive.

Each of the issues I mentioned have been discussed somewhere on this forum at great length by smarter more experienced refiners than me.

Nylon becomes a sticky mess in acid so your bag is something else.

A green solution is considered dirty. Clean auric is a pleasant yellow when dilute or a very pleasant orange/red when really loaded with gold. 8) Gold can come down very slowly from green solutions over night or even longer and it's not as pure as it could be. By digesting first in nitric you are simplifying the elemental soup you are trying to recover from. Gold drops more thoroughly and in large clumps from clean solutions.

With luck your powder still had moisture in it, if not you blew it over the side of your dish with too harsh of a flame. Your oxy/acetylene torch is an excellent tool for melting gold and you should never experience a 70% loss if you use it properly. A well prepared, preheated dish and a small quiet slightly reducing flame is what you need, if you hear a harsh hissing sound turn the oxygen down some more.

Lazersteve has a melt video on his site.

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for the wise counsel. I have been reading and absorbing much from across the entire forum. I have since returned to the problem of trying to obtain a yield of at least .50 gr per pentium pro chip and understand that pulverizing the chips first is essential towards that goal and I was ableto do that with a small manual three inch rock crusher which I bought on ebay. The thing works but is not the way to go to do any kind of volume, not to mention rough on the hands and the problem of silicon dust. Fearing silicosis from maybe doing this frequently in the future, I put on a dust mask. I researched around looking for a better way to accomplish this short of hiring a guy from Bangladesh to sit here all day and pound chips by hand and found a fellow who sells an automated pulverizing machine that accomplishes all that is needed while remediating the dust issue and also claims to turn chips and gold gravel into fine powder. You are probably already aware of it if not using such a machine aleady..."http://cgi.ebay.com/11-Inch-IMPACT-MILL-GOLD-SCRAP-RECOVERY-ORE-CRUSHER_W0QQitemZ330358238932QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCoins_Bullion?hash=item4ceae2aed4" and it is for sale on ebay. If anyone has any experience with this machine or thoughts on it please share.

Anyway, I then proceeded to take my hard produced dust from three pro chips and placed it in a beaker with two pints of nitric acid mixed from distilled water, sodium nitrate and sulphuric acid to the reccomended proportions. I did so to remove all the base metals first as I had been advised woul be necessary to produce a "clean solution" free of base metals. Anyway, a solution that would be yellow instead of green. So far so good.

Unfortunately a new problem arose, one I am sure is not also without remedy, and it appears to have to do with the nature of the ceramic properties not being exothermic. In the past i had placed gold plated pins and junk jewelry into nitric solutions and watched it bubble and steam while observing the gold plate particles flake off the base metals and quickly coat the surface. In this case however, it did not happen. There was a little bubbling but not much and then I left the beaker alone and returned a few hours later expecting to find the job done. About nothing. The few gold pins stll visible and stuck on small fragments of ceramic were still intact. Any gold plating atop any remnent fragments of the ceramic casing were also still attached and had not floated off. In fact little seemed to have happened. Perplexed, I did more reading and learned somewhere that this ceramic material absorbs all the heat and actually inhibits the heat needed to separate the gold and dissolve off the base metals. I added a little more potency to the soiup but to no apprecaible affect and even sitting over night did not set the gold free except only marginally. I thought maybe the base metals had at least dissolved and so after a day I poured of the nitric acid and washed the fragments and sludge at the bottom, even though bits of gold pate were still visible on half eaten pins and ceramic.

I then moved that into AR which had been ready three days and was not surprised to see the solution go a little green...or maybe a sort of yellow green or not as green as before, anyway....but not bright yellow either. So what to do to remedy this lack of dynamic activity in the nitric acid bath which seems to have something to with the lack of exothermic properties of the ceramic material? Bigger nitric acid bath solutions with smaller ammounts of powdered material dropped into the beaker over a longer period of time...or maybe more heat added via a hot plate beneath the beaker? Surely the solution to the solution is right before my eyes. Again, thank you for your wise counsel. JR

 

[qst42know]

Heating the poormans nitric will make a big difference. Two pints of solution seems excessive though. Enough solution to cover the material with heat, and enough time to finish the job with small additions if necessary. CPU pins are a tougher alloy and slower to remove than copper and brass from jewelery.

Stick to the plan and don't change to AR till the base metals are gone .