Hello everybody,
This is my first post on the forum, and of course I need to pay my great respect for this forum and it's great members. I have learned a lot in here.
Forgive me if this is to much details, too little details, or if I broke some forum rules.
So, after one year of studying Hoke and the forum, and a couple failed attempts on processing tiny amounts of scrap and trying to find suppliers of scrap and chemicals, I started my first serious test batch of 50 motherboards. I intend to do each type of components separately. First step is header pins, second is north bridge (ICs with golden corner on green fiber base), then I will think about partially plated pins and serial/parallel/vga/etc connectors.
Some background, I live in Egypt. I can get HCL for $0.5/L, Nitric for $1/L and Sulfuric for $1.3/L and H2O2 50% for $1/L. I also got SMB claimed to be "food quality" and succeeded in making copperas. Ultra cheap and readily available chemicals, with one problem: tiny non-professional shops, selling stuff in unmarked bottles. You don't know where/how it was made, it's quality, exact concentration or even if it is the right stuff. I bought 5L 70% nitric and it turned out to be either extremely weak nitric or something completely different, no effect on a pin in tube and weights 1.05K/L ( a lesson here, test chemicals before use!).
Also we are a free country
, nothing is illegal here, you can burn plastics, dump your dangerous chemicals in sewer or land and do whatever you want. I am not doing this and never will, I care for the environment, just bragging .
I intend to grow a small business, relying on labor more than machinery, as labor cost is extremely low in my country, you can get people competing for $100 a month, 6 days/week, 12h/day.
Also I am aware that there are better ways to do things, like electric cell for pins, but I want to master the chemical processes first.
So for the header pins, the 50 MB yielded 200g of header pins. Some 10g were heat desoldered, and the others were clipped. I put those in Nitric. 300mL hot water, incremental 300mL Nitric, settle and move the bulk of liquid to glass bottles and repeat 3 times. It took 900mL conc. Nitric to finish which from what I read is about right.
The resulting solution was dark green, I let it to settle for 2 days and got all precipitate in the main reactor. The precipitate was good layer of white powder/paste and some foils/solids (they looked black).
Now this white stuff should be tin paste or lead nitrate (there was extremely little solder on the pins). I followed Hoke's method and removed as much liquid as I can, put hot water to dissolve the lead nitrate and it looked like nothing dissolved. Then removed the liquid, put some 50% sulfuric and warmed to get rid of tin paste. Nothing happened. I boiled, nothing happened (sulfuric was good, right weight and a lot of heat when diluting). I poured everything in a big jar with water to dilute the sulfuric, let settle and removed most of the liquid, and repeated with hot water.
Now I have my beaker with the white stuff and solids/powder and little liquid, I think to evaporate to dry, add HCL/CL (will have traces of Nitric and Sulfuric but I believe it won't hurt). Dissolve gold and see what happens to the white stuff.
Now my first question: What is that white stuff that doesn't dissolve in Nitric, hot water or sulfuric?
My second question is about the resultant solution from the Nitric treatment. This solution is dark green, not dark blue as copper nitrate should be. My intention is to process copper nitrate to get nitric back and CuO for AP or metallic copper. I made some experiments on the liquid:
1- In a test tube, some solution a pinch of salt and a piece of aluminum foil, after some hours, bubbles formed on foil and something started to precipitate (very weak reaction).
2- Another tube, some solution and NaCl (intention to produce sodium nitrate and CuCl2), no visible reaction.
3- Interesting one, put 100mL in beaker, and evaporate in water bath. I went to sleep after 2 hours and turned off the heat, solution was around 80mL. I woke up to find solution around 60mL, deep blue (like typical copper nitrate) and a brown sediment. Intention was to evaporate to syrup, and store/crystalize for decomposition later when I'm able to.
Insights about this solution and the brown powder is needed.
Best regards and thanks in advance for your help.
Hawas
This is my first post on the forum, and of course I need to pay my great respect for this forum and it's great members. I have learned a lot in here.
Forgive me if this is to much details, too little details, or if I broke some forum rules.
So, after one year of studying Hoke and the forum, and a couple failed attempts on processing tiny amounts of scrap and trying to find suppliers of scrap and chemicals, I started my first serious test batch of 50 motherboards. I intend to do each type of components separately. First step is header pins, second is north bridge (ICs with golden corner on green fiber base), then I will think about partially plated pins and serial/parallel/vga/etc connectors.
Some background, I live in Egypt. I can get HCL for $0.5/L, Nitric for $1/L and Sulfuric for $1.3/L and H2O2 50% for $1/L. I also got SMB claimed to be "food quality" and succeeded in making copperas. Ultra cheap and readily available chemicals, with one problem: tiny non-professional shops, selling stuff in unmarked bottles. You don't know where/how it was made, it's quality, exact concentration or even if it is the right stuff. I bought 5L 70% nitric and it turned out to be either extremely weak nitric or something completely different, no effect on a pin in tube and weights 1.05K/L ( a lesson here, test chemicals before use!).
Also we are a free country
, nothing is illegal here, you can burn plastics, dump your dangerous chemicals in sewer or land and do whatever you want. I am not doing this and never will, I care for the environment, just bragging .I intend to grow a small business, relying on labor more than machinery, as labor cost is extremely low in my country, you can get people competing for $100 a month, 6 days/week, 12h/day.
Also I am aware that there are better ways to do things, like electric cell for pins, but I want to master the chemical processes first.
So for the header pins, the 50 MB yielded 200g of header pins. Some 10g were heat desoldered, and the others were clipped. I put those in Nitric. 300mL hot water, incremental 300mL Nitric, settle and move the bulk of liquid to glass bottles and repeat 3 times. It took 900mL conc. Nitric to finish which from what I read is about right.
The resulting solution was dark green, I let it to settle for 2 days and got all precipitate in the main reactor. The precipitate was good layer of white powder/paste and some foils/solids (they looked black).
Now this white stuff should be tin paste or lead nitrate (there was extremely little solder on the pins). I followed Hoke's method and removed as much liquid as I can, put hot water to dissolve the lead nitrate and it looked like nothing dissolved. Then removed the liquid, put some 50% sulfuric and warmed to get rid of tin paste. Nothing happened. I boiled, nothing happened (sulfuric was good, right weight and a lot of heat when diluting). I poured everything in a big jar with water to dilute the sulfuric, let settle and removed most of the liquid, and repeated with hot water.
Now I have my beaker with the white stuff and solids/powder and little liquid, I think to evaporate to dry, add HCL/CL (will have traces of Nitric and Sulfuric but I believe it won't hurt). Dissolve gold and see what happens to the white stuff.
Now my first question: What is that white stuff that doesn't dissolve in Nitric, hot water or sulfuric?
My second question is about the resultant solution from the Nitric treatment. This solution is dark green, not dark blue as copper nitrate should be. My intention is to process copper nitrate to get nitric back and CuO for AP or metallic copper. I made some experiments on the liquid:
1- In a test tube, some solution a pinch of salt and a piece of aluminum foil, after some hours, bubbles formed on foil and something started to precipitate (very weak reaction).
2- Another tube, some solution and NaCl (intention to produce sodium nitrate and CuCl2), no visible reaction.
3- Interesting one, put 100mL in beaker, and evaporate in water bath. I went to sleep after 2 hours and turned off the heat, solution was around 80mL. I woke up to find solution around 60mL, deep blue (like typical copper nitrate) and a brown sediment. Intention was to evaporate to syrup, and store/crystalize for decomposition later when I'm able to.
Insights about this solution and the brown powder is needed.
Best regards and thanks in advance for your help.
Hawas
