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My Plan - New to Refining. I would love a review please.
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I would love to hear about this! I thank everyone for the wonderful input!It isn’t something I want to type up on a cell phone,. I will try to get on the computer and try it in the next few days. And I don’t do technical very well.
Yes! I get all my PMs out by using steel/iron. Is there something i might be missing?
Thank you! I didnt realize urea could be used to neutralize. HCl, i thought that was more of an excess Nitric removal for AR. regarding the scale of my hobbby. I think im just really lucky finding free stuff since I have almost 30-45 pounds of circuit boards. But I just process like 5-6 in cut up pieces at a time.
Most people do a first cementing on copper because it will only cement precious metals and mercury if it is present. Iron will cement a host of base metals along with your values. See When In Doubt, Cement It Out.
Dave
This is a very good point. Theoretically, wouldnt HCl bath prior to ap/ar treatment dissolve most of the base metals? Ive beej reading Hokes book and this also has been mentioned. I have been doing HCl baths before anything else. Ive cemented copper and it looks to be relatively pure. If i ever get around to melting it to a bar of some sort, id probably give it another hcl bath.
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Martijn
Well-known member
HCl does not dissolve copper or other base metals from brass or bronze.
And you just spent a lot of time to put copper in solution to separate it from the pm's. Cementing it all back out sets you back to having a mix of copper, base metals and pm's.
Which is a waste of time and chemicals.
True and valid. This is all the copper i spent in actually practicing to cement my PMs when i was practicing using very low grade boards and multiple practice on a few small batches (as i am still new). This copper product in the photo is from the chemical by product of recovering silver. Ive used iron to cement out the copper in photo.
For the copper image (if i ever wanted to refine it and reuse to recover PMs) I was hoping to add hcl to remove other base metals and reuse solution in h202 and hcl bath (for a long time).
How does that sound? or still inefficient (honest question and wanted to pick your brain)
Martijn
Well-known member
I'm trying to make sense of this, but i don't understand what you're saying here.
AP does not need H2O2 by the way.
I am so sorry! I meant HCL. H2O2 is to create the AP (i understand just a bottle cap first to start it.
breaking down how I got this copper.
1. Manual desolder all board material and wire ends (flat white wire with assumed silver) my target material was only copper/assumed small amount of silver, i did not want to use good boards)
2. Soak in lye bath to remove solder mask
3. Soak hcl bath to remove lead and base metals (save hcl for reuse)
4. Soak Nitric to remove copper and silver
5. Add copper to cement silver and make Copper nitrate solution (i got micrograms silver haha!)
6. Cement copper by adding iron/steel
7. Making the end product the photo i took.
Is this a good way to practice and viable?
Keep the Peroxide out. HCl alone do not touch Copper.
HCl needs oxygen to dissolve copper. By itself it will not do it. So to speed up the removal of copper, the use of peroxide was meant to add oxygen to the HCl so it will speed up the process of oxygenating it. By doing so the HCl is now AP or more properly termed copper(ll)chloride aka, CuCl2
The problem can be that to much peroxide adds a rush of oxygen than can also dissolve some or all the gold as well making it seem to disappear.
Edit: to clarify, oxygen and peroxide is not CuCl2
until it had some copper oxide in it. The peroxide acts as the oxidizer for the copper.
The problem can be that to much peroxide adds a rush of oxygen than can also dissolve some or all the gold as well making it seem to disappear.
Edit: to clarify, oxygen and peroxide is not CuCl2
until it had some copper oxide in it. The peroxide acts as the oxidizer for the copper.
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I think we are coming into this piecemeal which only adds to confusion. If I were new to this process and starting out we should start at the beginning.
1. I have acquired a few laptops or desktop computers and I want to recover the gold. I disassemble the units to end up with the circuit boards and that is where we should start.
2. The chips and switches fans and IC's on the board need to be removed first. What are a few basic scenario's for removing these items to leave me with bare boards?
3. Most boards are coated with a solder mask that is applied by the manufacturer to prevent solder bridging on close circuits when the boards are manufactured. They also will prevent the chemistry from reaching the parts it needs to interact with so it needs to be removed. How is this done?
4. Now we are at the point of adding the chemistry. If I have enough pieces to fill a 5 gallon pail, how do I proceed? What percentage of water to Hydrochloric Acid and (if any) peroxide? Is an air bubbler preferred? Does this reaction rise, if so I need to leave space to prevent overflows? Finally how long should I allow this to react? Should I cover it loosely? Is it OK standing outside without a hood?
5. Next comes separation of the foils but let's get these first steps first and allow for comments from other AP users.
1. I have acquired a few laptops or desktop computers and I want to recover the gold. I disassemble the units to end up with the circuit boards and that is where we should start.
2. The chips and switches fans and IC's on the board need to be removed first. What are a few basic scenario's for removing these items to leave me with bare boards?
3. Most boards are coated with a solder mask that is applied by the manufacturer to prevent solder bridging on close circuits when the boards are manufactured. They also will prevent the chemistry from reaching the parts it needs to interact with so it needs to be removed. How is this done?
4. Now we are at the point of adding the chemistry. If I have enough pieces to fill a 5 gallon pail, how do I proceed? What percentage of water to Hydrochloric Acid and (if any) peroxide? Is an air bubbler preferred? Does this reaction rise, if so I need to leave space to prevent overflows? Finally how long should I allow this to react? Should I cover it loosely? Is it OK standing outside without a hood?
5. Next comes separation of the foils but let's get these first steps first and allow for comments from other AP users.
This thread will be most informative if you do all of your current stash and collect the foils before you process the foils in aqua regia. Hopefully if you are patient we can get through the entire process and have an informative thread.
In my personal opinion, I would probably discourage number 3. Yes, I know there's a bit of gold there, but if we want a comprehensive, common sense thread, I don't think I would encourage anyone to process depopulated boards. In my opinion, that should be part of this discussion. When to recognize the value of time and chemicals versus any tiny amount of values. Maybe I'm wrong because I've never processed depopulated boards, but from everything I've read here on the forum, there just doesn't seem to be enought left there to make it worth while.
It's kind of like chasing the last few PPM of values in a solution. Yes, you can do it, but is it worth the effort?
Dave
It's kind of like chasing the last few PPM of values in a solution. Yes, you can do it, but is it worth the effort?
Dave
This is the most important point in the long run. The more ways we know, the better chance of being successful.
Do we want to try and tackle all of these steps in one thread? That will cover a lot of ground and some points alone could become very long if we can get the silent majority to pitch in. Sad to say, but too many just sit and take but seldom, if ever pitch in.
Later this afternoon I will post a new thread on small scale processing of circuit boards with an brief outline of what I would think needs to be covered. I would think that a stopping point would be the collection of the foils as they are accumulated and follow another path.
Martijn
Well-known member
I agree.
For large processors, I think if you can grind and gravity separate them, and have a buyer for the glassfiber and epoxy resins you can see the gold and copper as an extra like copper refining is.
Otherwise you will ceate a lot of waste which costs money to discard instead of making money.
For the hobbyist its better to sell them as low grade imo.
The same goes for the base metals more reactive than copper. Discard the hydroxides at the chemical dump after waste treatment.
