I am looking to start an e-waste recycling plant and methods to extract gold and other precious metals along the process. I am here to learn more about it from this forum as I am a beginner in this. Hoping to gain knowledge from this forum in time...
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There is a lot to study for this topic.
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We ask our new members to do 3 things.
1. Read C.M. Hokes book on refining jewelers scrap, it gives an easy introduction to the most important chemistry regarding refining.
It is free here on the forum: https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=19798
2. Then read the safety section of the forum: https://goldrefiningforum.com/forums/safety.47/
3. And then read about "Dealing with waste" in the forum: https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/dealing-with-waste.10539/
Suggested reading:
https://goldrefiningforum.com/forums/the-library.101/
https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/when-in-doubt-cement-it-out.30236/
https://goldrefiningforum.com/threa...le-read-this-before-you-post-about-ore.33333/
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Governments are cracking down on backyard e-waste recycling for public safety reasons and are supporting "green" recycling and some have begun to require licensing. Have you check-out Aurophillic microbial digestion as a leading new technology? The old true and tried methods are still incorporated in the process but with barely an environmental footprint.
Fantastic to hear of your pursuit. Please keep us posted!
Fantastic to hear of your pursuit. Please keep us posted!
Martijn
Well-known member
You could start to learn about the different types of scrap and how to process them.
But if you plan on large regular batches, I think you need to shred, grind or mill, magnetic separate, use shaker table to concentrate and smelt the copper and precious metals for the copper cell.
You will need a chemical lab to process the slimes with the values.
As you haven't really specified what you are looking to process or the quantities you are looking to process, I will assume you will be processing various streams of scrap. If that is the case I suggest you learn the art of sampling and the techniques of assaying. To start out if you can properly sample your material and analyze it you can ship it out to an outside refiner and get a fair return. As your business evolves you can see what material yields the greatest margins and then set up to refine in house. But only after you know the sampling and analytical aspect of the business. This very old thread is about sampling different types of scrap and it can give you an idea of the various materials you may encounter. Find that thread HERE
I guess you really do not understand what I am trying to tell you bout participating here. If you are not an expert, as you yourself have stated, you are ripe for abuse by unscrupulous players in the refining field. And, if you don't believe that there are unscrupulous refiners, you are also quite naive. As an example I will link you to a thread posted by a member from Egypt if I remember correctly. She bought some equipment and hired some workers and had losses. She came here not knowing much about refining or about the equipment she had to work with. The thread where we helped her is here.
If you read it through you can get an idea of what the forum can do to help you learn what you need to know. She actually posted a few months after this to follow up saying all of her issues were solved.
What I am trying to say is that to effectively manage a business you need an understanding of that business. And as strange as this may sound, there are people here who you do not know and likely will never know other than the name they use here, who can help you gain that knowledge. We have done it before and I am quite sure we will do it again. And it is you who has the most to gain from it.
If you read it through you can get an idea of what the forum can do to help you learn what you need to know. She actually posted a few months after this to follow up saying all of her issues were solved.
What I am trying to say is that to effectively manage a business you need an understanding of that business. And as strange as this may sound, there are people here who you do not know and likely will never know other than the name they use here, who can help you gain that knowledge. We have done it before and I am quite sure we will do it again. And it is you who has the most to gain from it.
When I first joined this forum I knew two things about refining.
1. Electronics had gold in them.
2. The term aqua regia was the name of the chemical to dissolve gold.
With out this forum I would most likely still not know much more than that.
1. Electronics had gold in them.
2. The term aqua regia was the name of the chemical to dissolve gold.
With out this forum I would most likely still not know much more than that.
Hi and welcome. If you want to build a decent ewaste recycling plant that will process viable quantities per hour and separate into streams that both retain the values whilst allowing full recovery you will need deep pockets.
The full range of equipment will run into seven figures.
The full range of equipment will run into seven figures.
Thanks for your guidance and support. I have been trading e-waste scraps for 1 year now. But I was thinking of starting with just gold extraction only for the time being and then extending to other metals later. I am learning things as you said and that is the correct way of doing it. But when you are too much interested in something and can't wait to start. I have already spoken to a Chinese company and they are manufacturing this machine for surface gold extraction and putting a link for it here. It would be nice if could give an opinion about it
https://www.sunygroup.cn/products/E-waste-Recycling-Equipment/Gold-Deplating-System.html
https://www.sunygroup.cn/products/E-waste-Recycling-Equipment/Gold-Deplating-System.html
E-scrap is a varied and challenging material to refine. This is because it is difficult to just look at a piece and know how much gold it contains. It is rare that identical individual circuit components are shipped in quantities for commercial processing, usually it is a mixture of different circuits and it is difficult to place an accurate value on it. And to make things even more confusing, the same circuit or chip manufactured at different times can contain different amounts of gold.
The link posted is for a complete system and it involves considerable investment up front. It is actually a series of component systems needed to separate the different components of the scrap. You could buy a stand alone de-plating system and strip off all of the exposed gold and think you were doing it properly. But when the engineers design electronic circuits little if any thought is given to recovery of the individual materials used in making the piece. There is gold hidden in tiny pure gold wires that are encapsulated and would be totally missed by simply de-plating the circuit.
So that means you need equipment to expose all of the values to even have a chance to recover all of them. That equipment can be had from the company link you posted and surely it can be incorporated into the system.
There are many different ways to process this material, both mechanically shredding and chemically stripping and pyro-metallurgically using smelting furnaces and electroplating to recover the copper and separate the values.
Unfortunately when talking to a company selling this equipment, they will either try to sell you their entire line wether or not you need it, or assure you that one approach fits all. You will be better off speaking to someone who has hands on experience with this equipment rather than someone selling it.
There are approaches to the type of refining you are looking to do that involve "cherry picking" the pieces you know you can refine in house and shipping the rest off to a smelter. If you can prepare, by shredding or even smelting the material before shipment you can assay the material and have a very good idea what it is worth. This approach involves having the capacity to analyze the material after you have it in a sample-able form.
So as you can imagine, there are a lot of forks in the road when it comes to recovery from e-scrap. Choose the right forks and you will profit, choose the wrong fork and your yields will suffer. That is why the best advice will come from those who have used this type equipment rather than those who sell it.
The link posted is for a complete system and it involves considerable investment up front. It is actually a series of component systems needed to separate the different components of the scrap. You could buy a stand alone de-plating system and strip off all of the exposed gold and think you were doing it properly. But when the engineers design electronic circuits little if any thought is given to recovery of the individual materials used in making the piece. There is gold hidden in tiny pure gold wires that are encapsulated and would be totally missed by simply de-plating the circuit.
So that means you need equipment to expose all of the values to even have a chance to recover all of them. That equipment can be had from the company link you posted and surely it can be incorporated into the system.
There are many different ways to process this material, both mechanically shredding and chemically stripping and pyro-metallurgically using smelting furnaces and electroplating to recover the copper and separate the values.
Unfortunately when talking to a company selling this equipment, they will either try to sell you their entire line wether or not you need it, or assure you that one approach fits all. You will be better off speaking to someone who has hands on experience with this equipment rather than someone selling it.
There are approaches to the type of refining you are looking to do that involve "cherry picking" the pieces you know you can refine in house and shipping the rest off to a smelter. If you can prepare, by shredding or even smelting the material before shipment you can assay the material and have a very good idea what it is worth. This approach involves having the capacity to analyze the material after you have it in a sample-able form.
So as you can imagine, there are a lot of forks in the road when it comes to recovery from e-scrap. Choose the right forks and you will profit, choose the wrong fork and your yields will suffer. That is why the best advice will come from those who have used this type equipment rather than those who sell it.
This is a surface strip plant. The issue is that most of the gold in ewaste isn't on the surface, so these plants don't achieve much more than becoming and additional step before still sending your products to a refinery.
