raa
Member
Greetings from the UK
This is my first post here but I have been lurking for several weeks. First of all can I say what an excellent resource this forum is and thank all those who have invested time contributing to it.
I became interested in this subject because I have a steady amount of e-waste coming my way which I don’t have to pay for; say around 20 desktop PC a month, plus various ancillaries. I have been separating the components and collecting piles of RAM, CPU, Slot cards and motherboards.
I have been slowly reading Hoke and trawling the forum for information on the various processes.
I would like to do some refining on a small scale so I have been removing the gold fingers, IC chips and pins from the slot cards and RAM. I have then discarded the depopulated boards.
I live in a fairly built up area so any processes involving incineration are out of the question, also I don’t want to create a lot of waste chemicals. I have a plan to eventually recover the gold from fingers using the AP method and to make a small sulphuric acid cell to process pins. I am a long way from buying in any acids but this is the general direction I want to go in.
At the moment I don’t really see how I could make a decent job of processing motherboards, I mean I could harvest some chips along with the CPU socket and some gold plated pins, but that would leave a lot of semi valuable materials on the boards (it seems like that to me anyway). So my first questions are: What do people do with their motherboards? Strip or sell? And is there much advantage in saving up a large quantity, say 250KG vs selling in small 20 kg lots.
Thanks
Mark
Edit: 'discarded' in this context means taken to the local recycling centre where they have a dedicated container for e-waste.
This is my first post here but I have been lurking for several weeks. First of all can I say what an excellent resource this forum is and thank all those who have invested time contributing to it.
I became interested in this subject because I have a steady amount of e-waste coming my way which I don’t have to pay for; say around 20 desktop PC a month, plus various ancillaries. I have been separating the components and collecting piles of RAM, CPU, Slot cards and motherboards.
I have been slowly reading Hoke and trawling the forum for information on the various processes.
I would like to do some refining on a small scale so I have been removing the gold fingers, IC chips and pins from the slot cards and RAM. I have then discarded the depopulated boards.
I live in a fairly built up area so any processes involving incineration are out of the question, also I don’t want to create a lot of waste chemicals. I have a plan to eventually recover the gold from fingers using the AP method and to make a small sulphuric acid cell to process pins. I am a long way from buying in any acids but this is the general direction I want to go in.
At the moment I don’t really see how I could make a decent job of processing motherboards, I mean I could harvest some chips along with the CPU socket and some gold plated pins, but that would leave a lot of semi valuable materials on the boards (it seems like that to me anyway). So my first questions are: What do people do with their motherboards? Strip or sell? And is there much advantage in saving up a large quantity, say 250KG vs selling in small 20 kg lots.
Thanks
Mark
Edit: 'discarded' in this context means taken to the local recycling centre where they have a dedicated container for e-waste.