My Plan - New to Refining. I would love a review please.

[4metals]

And I don’t do technical very well.

but we do edit's very well, we've got your back!

 

[Ellias]

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.

I would love to hear about this! I thank everyone for the wonderful input!

 

[Ellias]

Read and follow the dealing with waste thread, it explains it all. Your plan is a bit off from what we usually do. you precios metals should be out before yo go to cementing and waste treatment.

Yes! I get all my PMs out by using steel/iron. Is there something i might be missing?

 

[Ellias]

Unless you live somewhere you CAN'T buy Nitric, don't bother trying to make it.

But - for PCB's - the 1st step should be a long (like 1 month long) soak in equal parts Distilled H20 + HCL + Hydrogen Peroxide until you get a reaction. Keep it covered and in direct sunlight if possible to keep it warm. As the mixture evaporates off (leave it OUTSIDE!!! add more of each to keep the reaction going.) This will flake the gold sputtering off of the boards without dissolving too much junk material. (PCB's have mostly copper in them, which makes AR tricky IMHO.) Especially if they are populated boards, going straight to AR introduces all sorts of other stuff from the other components on the board - specifically a lot of nickel, lead and copper.

Once everything has flaked off, you can wash the boards down with water and take them to a recycler or rubbish.

Now you have a bunch of flake in the bucket - wash this well with water, and filter. Pick out as many of the big components that may have flaked off the board along with the gold, but don't drive yourself crazy.

Filter it a few times, then into a glass beaker and add AR to start the normal process. Starting with raw PCB's means using a lot of nitric ($$$) and even more waste solution - where the HCL + HyPerox can be easily neutralized with Urea

Don't expect much - PCB's - even good ones - yield <1% by weight

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.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Yes! I get all my PMs out by using steel/iron. Is there something i might be missing?

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

 

[Ellias]

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.

 

[Martijn]

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.

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.

 

[Ellias]

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]

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).

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.

 

[Ellias]

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?

 

[Yggdrasil]

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)

Keep the Peroxide out. HCl alone do not touch Copper.

 

[Shark]

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.

 

[4metals]

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.

 

[4metals]

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.

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.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

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

 

[Shark]

5. Next comes separation of the foils but let's get these first steps first and allow for comments from other AP users

This is the most important point in the long run. The more ways we know, the better chance of being successful.

 

[Shark]

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.

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.

 

[4metals]

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]

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

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.

 

[4metals]

I have started a thread to generate an organized approach to the AP process here

Let's try to make this an organized step by step guide.