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Goldnopportunityy

New member
Joined
Sep 22, 2020
Messages
4
Hi everyone I recently. Purchased some scrap that I got for a really good price. Everything was in a pretty large fire so a lot of the boards are burned down to foils. Problem is that when i use acid peroxide to de etch I get a whole bunch of bits of burned silicone flakes and other junk making any recovered pms incredibly dirty nearly impossible to filter properly. My question is what is the best way to pre process this stuff so j can get the pms separated to properly put into solution. Also what is the quality of scrap I bought it all appears to be telecom grade from 70s 80s and some newer network boards. It seems very good I can shred most boards down to foil by hand. Though most of the foil if not all appears to be just copper though some look like the gold in the ic chips melted out onto the foil behind . Thanks
 

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I am assuming you are using AP to recover the values and then recovering the foils and any powders after filtering and rinsing.
If you then dissolve the recovered materials any junk should stay on the filter as you filter it, if on the first pass your solution seems dirty filter it again through the same filter.
 
Forgot better pics and yes you are correct my issue is that during the AP when I wash the foils I get a lot of the boards that stop up the filter even if I pre wash everything I still get lots of little bits that clog the filter along with the recoverables. Are you saying just let the gunk go over into my acid bleach solution, I need to remove any ferrous material prior to this step yes? I have several hundred pounds of these boards cpus included what can I expect roughly for yields from this amount of material I have possibility of buying more. Is shredding everything worth it or depopulate what I can? My issue is it being burnt and handling it to depopulate is much higher health risk I think. Many boards seem to have many liberated gold bus wires etc. I thank you all greatly for your help!
 

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I depopulate all my boards. Things are far less complicated when you are only dealing with a couple of known metals at a time.
I would DEFINITELY be wearing gloves and respirator of some sort when working with this type of material.
From what I see, those were nice looking boards, especially the ceramic CPU's.(which are processed separately anyhow)
Have you tried letting your solution settle for a day or two and then decanting?
 
I have the junk seems to settle with recoverables though I was thinking of making some type of ridged wall container and hitting things with a pressure wash prior to AP
 
Don't worry about all the junk in with the foils. The point of this first filtering is to wash the AP chemistry off the foils, (and the junk).

Put the washed, (filtered), foils with the junk in the digesting container and dissolve the foils. Then wash, (filter), the liquid off, which will give you the clean gold bearing acid to drop the gold from. Throw the now washed, (filtered), junk away with the filter.
 
Personally, I would depopulate boards, sort everything into its own category , trim whatever fingers possible, and run the sheared boards through AR. Let solution settle for a day or two.(it will be very dirty)
Decant.
Add water to leftovers and decant again...and so on.
Drop gold and do at least one more refining.
Process sheared items accordingly.
 
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