mike6
Well-known member
Gentlemen
Allow me to open my enquiry with a quote by British labour party politician, Denis Healey.
Healey’s First Law Of Holes: "When in one, stop digging.”
I have spent the past few months exploring the feasibility of extracting gold from “small socket” and “large socket “ motherboards, as defined by “Boardsort”.
To date my efforts have been focused mainly on the pre- refining task of de-populating the boards, and sorting the components into value sequences.
To this end, I procured 1100 pounds (500 kg) of motherboards, and set about reducing the motherboards to “bare board level. I made use of two industrial Ryobi MP 300 multi tools, both of which are on the verge of failing mechanically at the oscillating head.
Aside from the CPU’s, some 29.76 pounds (13.6 kg) of IC’s (including flat packs, both large and tiny) were harvested. North/south bridge chips yielded 12.56 pounds (5.7 kg)
The remaining gold bearing material is contained on the plated pins found in the PCI slots, IDE connectors, AGP slots, DRAM memory slots, serial ports, parallel ports, LAN ports, usb ports and CPU socket connector pins.
It is this vast collection of pins that frustrate me to my core.
I have taken a representative sample of these mixed pins, and after pyrolysing and ball milling them to remove the plastics, cast a bar for XRF scanning. The scan shows the presence of Au, Cu, Pb, Zn, Ni, Fe, and Ag.
I have worn out two pairs of glasses reading the “pin” posts, only to discover that I am now more confused about pin processing than when I started.
I am not clear on the sequence of chemical events that need to take place to remove the undesirable elements prior to the aqua regia process.
My major confusion lies in which sequence to use the Nitric, Hydrochloric, and sulphuric acids.
Please understand, that I am not looking for a quick recipe on how to process pins, but rather a lesson on why one should first remove copper and zinc before iron and nickel, and leave the lead for last, or vice versa if that is the case.
Thank you for your consideration.
Mike
Allow me to open my enquiry with a quote by British labour party politician, Denis Healey.
Healey’s First Law Of Holes: "When in one, stop digging.”
I have spent the past few months exploring the feasibility of extracting gold from “small socket” and “large socket “ motherboards, as defined by “Boardsort”.
To date my efforts have been focused mainly on the pre- refining task of de-populating the boards, and sorting the components into value sequences.
To this end, I procured 1100 pounds (500 kg) of motherboards, and set about reducing the motherboards to “bare board level. I made use of two industrial Ryobi MP 300 multi tools, both of which are on the verge of failing mechanically at the oscillating head.
Aside from the CPU’s, some 29.76 pounds (13.6 kg) of IC’s (including flat packs, both large and tiny) were harvested. North/south bridge chips yielded 12.56 pounds (5.7 kg)
The remaining gold bearing material is contained on the plated pins found in the PCI slots, IDE connectors, AGP slots, DRAM memory slots, serial ports, parallel ports, LAN ports, usb ports and CPU socket connector pins.
It is this vast collection of pins that frustrate me to my core.
I have taken a representative sample of these mixed pins, and after pyrolysing and ball milling them to remove the plastics, cast a bar for XRF scanning. The scan shows the presence of Au, Cu, Pb, Zn, Ni, Fe, and Ag.
I have worn out two pairs of glasses reading the “pin” posts, only to discover that I am now more confused about pin processing than when I started.
I am not clear on the sequence of chemical events that need to take place to remove the undesirable elements prior to the aqua regia process.
My major confusion lies in which sequence to use the Nitric, Hydrochloric, and sulphuric acids.
Please understand, that I am not looking for a quick recipe on how to process pins, but rather a lesson on why one should first remove copper and zinc before iron and nickel, and leave the lead for last, or vice versa if that is the case.
Thank you for your consideration.
Mike