My results of specific types of IC chips, flatpacks and BGA

[patnor1011]

I managed somehow. It is bit different like when using proper stuff but I have run out. So I used concrete cleaner for HCl sadly that one was only 12% HCl took a while to evaporate more than half of it but when it got down it worked better. My nitric is all but gone so I used 200g of sodium nitrate I bought off ebay a few years ago as an emergency measure. Anyway got 22g of nice tan gold powder but after 2 days of toiling and swearing I will leave it as it is and clean only when I get proper stuff again. That was concentrate from BGA IC and easier to do than what wait for me next, I got about 50g of concentrate from mixed IC but I am tired of improvising :mrgreen:
Now only to sort out about 2l of a solution with some colloidal gold in it and I am done for the day.

 

[Tzoax]

I managed somehow. It is bit different like when using proper stuff but I have run out. So I used concrete cleaner for HCl sadly that one was only 12% HCl took a while to evaporate more than half of it but when it got down it worked better. My nitric is all but gone so I used 200g of sodium nitrate I bought off ebay a few years ago as an emergency measure. Anyway got 22g of nice tan gold powder but after 2 days of toiling and swearing I will leave it as it is and clean only when I get proper stuff again. That was concentrate from BGA IC and easier to do than what wait for me next, I got about 50g of concentrate from mixed IC but I am tired of improvising :mrgreen:
Now only to sort out about 2l of a solution with some colloidal gold in it and I am done for the day.

Are you sure it is colloidal gold? If you made a concentrate from BGA chips (black tops only) there shouldn't be tin in it (at least i don't know there is tin and i never had similar problem with BGA chips).

 

[Tzoax]

Hello to everybody. I am preparing 8.7 kilograms of IC chips from the picture for new testing with 2 decimal scales...soon they will be incinerated.

 

[cosmetal]

Alex.

Looking forward to seeing your results and pics.

James

 

[kernels]

Nice Alex, look forward to following your progress!

 

[Tzoax]

Thank you all... today i pyrolized all of the IC chips with propane burner.

Before i started i separated them by type into jars like in the picture, i weighted them and i took pictures.



I used big stainless steel pan (left) for pyrolizing and little stainless steel pan (right) for cooling IC chips. That way i was able to continue burning while pyrolized IC chips are cooling. At the end all of the types of pyrolized IC chips was brought back to a belonging jar.



I pyrolized IC chips until there was no more smoke. A few pictures while pyrolizing.





The next step is incineration. I will incinerate them separately on a electric hotplate.

Alex

 

[patnor1011]

I do not want to sound anal about it but what you did is incineration. Pyrolysis is something different.

 

[Tzoax]

I do not want to sound anal about it but what you did is incineration. Pyrolysis is something different.

Thank you for correction Pat...

In this first phase of burning IC chips which i used (and i named it pyrolizing) all organic materials was burned with propane burner...until there is no more smoke...but yet chips are not burned that much to become soft and white.

In second phase i called incineration i am using electric hotplate - where after couple of hours chips became soft, white, easy to make powder of them prior to sieving.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

As Pat said, you're not pyrolyzing. In pyrolysis, the chips would be heated without oxygen present. The epoxies and plastics break down into gasses, and when properly done, those gasses are used as fuel to further heat the material. Pyrolysis is complete when all the complex chemicals have broken down and what remains is mostly carbon and metals.

The material is then heated with oxygen present. The carbon and oxygen react leaving mostly ash and metals.

Unfortunately, the term pyrolysis is often misused.

Dave

 

[niks neims]

In second phase i called incineration i am using electric hotplate - where after couple of hours chips became soft, white, easy to make powder of them prior to sieving.

Please tell me more about this method: how hot does your hotplate get approximately? I doubt it gets red hot (500-700 c°)... And chips still turn powdery white? Very interesting i will definately try it next time i get my hands on some IC...

 

[Tzoax]

As Pat said, you're not pyrolyzing. In pyrolysis, the chips would be heated without oxygen present. The epoxies and plastics break down into gasses, and when properly done, those gasses are used as fuel to further heat the material. Pyrolysis is complete when all the complex chemicals have broken down and what remains is mostly carbon and metals.

The material is then heated with oxygen present. The carbon and oxygen react leaving mostly ash and metals.

Unfortunately, the term pyrolysis is often misused.

Dave

Thank you Dave for much detailed explanation. As soon as Pat corrected me i found difference in terminology on wikipedia. It was my mistake. I gave explanation why and what i was thinking of.
The confusion part for me was how to make difference in terminology between phase 1 and phase 2 where in phase 1 i used propane burner to burn all organic materials, and phase 2 where i will use electric hotplate to make "total incineration" until chips become all soft and white.

If in both cases the process is called incineration, how could i name it - incomplete/complete incineration?

 

[Tzoax]

In second phase i called incineration i am using electric hotplate - where after couple of hours chips became soft, white, easy to make powder of them prior to sieving.

Please tell me more about this method: how hot does your hotplate get approximately? I doubt it gets red hot (500-700 c°)... And chips still turn powdery white? Very interesting i will definately try it next time i get my hands on some IC...

I am using 2000W hotplate like in the picture, and you can see how IC chips look like. For me it is much better way for incinerating IC chips because they really become soft and easy to make powder. They become red hot like hotplate does. I used to put them directly on a hotplate and cover them with metal plate. After couple of hours i remove them, wait to cool, shake inside of jar, sieve, and return larger parts of chips again if they don't
crack by shaking inside of jar.

 

[UncleBenBen]

Tzoaz, I think of your step 1 as a controlled combustion. I do it in much the same way, where I control the flame to the point that it burns up the nasties in the initial burn. So that there is very little, if any, smell of burning plastic. Then I continue to heat until the carbon is mostly gone to ash.

Not quite as efficient as a good pyrolysis set up, but it can be done with the minimal amount of time and materials.

 

[Tzoax]

Tzoaz, I think of your step 1 as a controlled combustion. I do it in much the same way, where I control the flame to the point that it burns up the nasties in the initial burn. So that there is very little, if any, smell of burning plastic. Then I continue to heat until the carbon is mostly gone to ash.

Not quite as efficient as a good pyrolysis set up, but it can be done with the minimal amount of time and materials.

I never tried to make pyrolysis set up, i guess i just used to incinerate IC chips this way - with electric hotplate. One electric hotplate burner did the job for years...until small cracks appears on its surfice and burner became much weaker... like in this thread where i had doubt that maybe there is some of the gold bonding wires still there...i made test and there is no gold - http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=25300

And now i have new hotplate burner....and it is much better than one before... after just couple of minutes it becomes red hot...



And it works much faster....after 15-20 minutes i remove them, after they cooled i shake them inside of the jar, sieve them and repeat the process until it is done...usually 3 times until all of the residues are wires and silicon dies.



When i put the IC chips on a hotplate i cover them with metal plate (made from CD/DVD optical drive plate).



This way i can process 1kg of IC chips for about 3-4 hours.

 

[richard2013]

Tzoax,

In the first phase how did you manage not to breathe the toxic smell and fumes from the burning plastics?

 

[g_axelsson]

Incinerating or pyrolysis, what's the difference? Not so hard actually.

Pyrolysis : Heating organic materials without oxygen until they break down and only leaves coal. An example is making charcoal from wood. The smoke from pyrolysis is often flammable and contains light molecules as well as carbon monoxide and water.

Incineration : Burning with oxygen. This will turn carbon into carbon dioxide. Burning charcoal is a form of incineration. Properly done all carbon is removed and we are left with the ashes.

If you put a pan on the hotplate and put a lid on then it is pyrolysis, but when you take the lid off and turn those IC:s into ash it is incineration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis

Göran

 

[Tzoax]

Tzoax,

In the first phase how did you manage not to breathe the toxic smell and fumes from the burning plastics?

By controlling the flame - like on this picture:

https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/download/file.php?id=36991&mode=view
I cover the bottom of pan with IC chips, then i add a lot of heat with this big propane burner by adding high gas pressure - ... and there is no or very little smoke.... but if i remove the burner it will start to smoke immediately. So i just continue burning with high gas pressure until IC chips are carbonized. I think this is happening because of lack of oxygen...and this is exactly why i named it pyrolization... there was no cover on the pan, but the flame is so strong that IC chips are not fuming.

Maybe a controlled combustion is the right term like UncleBenBen said:

Tzoaz, I think of your step 1 as a controlled combustion. I do it in much the same way, where I control the flame to the point that it burns up the nasties in the initial burn. So that there is very little, if any, smell of burning plastic. Then I continue to heat until the carbon is mostly gone to ash.

Now...i am sieving the ash. After 3 times incinerating on a hotplate and sieving this is what was left:



There are very few of white ash chunks....then i manually remove them-process them again. After that i remove the iron wires with a magnet, and this is result - a fine powder that is ready for making concentrate:



And finally i separate silicon dies from wires/heatsinks.

 

[UncleBenBen]

In the first phase how did you manage not to breathe the toxic smell and fumes from the burning plastics?

Like Tzoax my main concern was eliminating the toxic smoke in the initial burn. It took a little practice to get it right, but I had good success with this little setup I had posted about here...

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=24866&p=262884&hilit=Red+bricks#p262884

 

[theitalianhenchman]

I finished testing. First beaker - 0.01g of gold, second beaker (with dissolved silver) - no gold.
1232.jpg

My conclusion is that solder balls should be processed with HCl simmer boiling/incineration (like i did at first test) and there is no point melting it, it will just reduce gold content (some of the gold will be left in residues) and based on poor results of this second test - 0.01g it is obvious that something is wrong. I think it really needs incineration for better results.

I am still saving solder balls and now i know how i will process them in the future.

I know that is a little late, but I think you don't get any gold because that kind of chips do not contain gold at all, so you made no mistake it is just that the gold is not present, there is just a little flash on a corner but that's it.

I see you are preparing new batch of chips; will you do even one with only BGA chips from ram? It will be interesting to see how they yield.

Keep up the good work, and compliment for this very helpfull thread!

 

[kernels]

I finished testing. First beaker - 0.01g of gold, second beaker (with dissolved silver) - no gold.
1232.jpg

My conclusion is that solder balls should be processed with HCl simmer boiling/incineration (like i did at first test) and there is no point melting it, it will just reduce gold content (some of the gold will be left in residues) and based on poor results of this second test - 0.01g it is obvious that something is wrong. I think it really needs incineration for better results.

I am still saving solder balls and now i know how i will process them in the future.

I know that is a little late, but I think you don't get any gold because that kind of chips do not contain gold at all, so you made no mistake it is just that the gold is not present, there is just a little flash on a corner but that's it.

I see you are preparing new batch of chips; will you do even one with only BGA chips from ram? It will be interesting to see how they yield.

Keep up the good work, and compliment for this very helpfull thread!

I'm fairly sure he did do BGA chips from ram early on, on page 1.

The circuit boards are generally flash Gold plated before the BGA chips are reflowed on, the very thin Gold plating dissolves into the solder during the reflow process, that is what he was trying to recover by dissolving away the Tin.