New feedstock question

[4metals]

I believe Nick is referring to the solids you generate from hydroxide treatment of aqua regia wastes. Those solids can be holding. But if the base metals are low in those waste streams (likely) you may be running your waste through resins followed by charcoal before discharge. Then there are no solids to worry about.

 

[Golden]

I believe Nick is referring to the solids you generate from hydroxide treatment of aqua regia wastes. Those solids can be holding. But if the base metals are low in those waste streams (likely) you may be running your waste through resins followed by charcoal before discharge. Then there are no solids to worry about.

Oh I gotcha, yeah not too worried there as that is exactly what we do resin followed by AC. But its a good point to test more and measure out what we are getting paid on. We have done that in the past and the refiner is truly top notch. Not sure if I've said before but we use ARA in Dallas. Nothing but great experience with them.

 

[nickvc]

It’s good to hear your refiner is treating you fairly but checks and balances are always good to install as they give you an insight as to where your values are or should be and that is valuable knowledge for any business.
If you look to all major refiners they have the checks and balances and scavenge every gram of values available, it’s amazing what can be recovered once you identify the source of those losses.

 

[4metals]

It's good that Golden has his 2 streams down and is getting decent returns. We should now go back and focus on the new feedstock now that we have a good idea of his processing capabilities.

My impression is a clock is ticking for him to decide if that stream is profitable for him.

 

[nickvc]

4metals I rarely messed with circuit boards unless very high grade but don’t they use hot water and lye to strip the mask?
If so once the masking is stripped would it be possible to simply add cyanide and strip the gold in the same solution which cuts down on waste solutions and as the solution is already hot it should be quick to strip the gold.

 

[4metals]

There are lots of options to strip the mask. Here the issue will be not only recovering the values under the mask, but recovering values inside IC’s and not exposed. This is a multistep process which will be worked out when we know more about the boards.

 

[markscomp]

There are lots of options to strip the mask. Here the issue will be not only recovering the values under the mask, but recovering values inside IC’s and not exposed. This is a multistep process which will be worked out when we know more about the boards.

he already deals with a refiner. (Golden may want to demask or shred only - before the material leaves his business - creating like a short line item) then refiner may have the capability to shred / incinerate / ball / sift and melt to get a number on the metals potentially recovered that everyone can live with on a consistent basis - without creating a whole new full line.

 

[4metals]

Every refiner has feed streams that they cannot process in house for many reasons. The key to success however is never shipping material that is not homogeneous and sampled. If tou can’t do that, go with the material and witness it.

 

[Golden]

he already deals with a refiner. (Golden may want to demask or shred only - before the material leaves his business - creating like a short line item) then refiner may have the capability to shred / incinerate / ball / sift and melt to get a number on the metals potentially recovered that everyone can live with on a consistent basis - without creating a whole new full line.

I have got to say, this is kind of where I'm leaning. I have an old shredder that we can shred incoming product and meet their needs for destruction. Sure I may keep some around to play with and maybe figure it out, but I think its more of a distraction and I should just push it off to the refiner and settle for the lower rates not being separated and all.

I had a guy working on doing a full board breakdown so we knew exactly what was in every single board. lol we even failed at that. I have never seen a red ... and I mean RED AR solution before but he had one. We are just outside of our area of comfort with this I think. If I do any processing at all, I might setup a mask stripping tank and maybe process the external plating with the KI circuit, that might make sense financially.

I did reach out to the rhode island company and have a few of their samples coming in, but I'm not sure that really changes the game. We still don't have a good understanding how to process the ICs nor deal with the wastes properly.

It just seems like a really sexy feedstock .......

 

[4metals]

Shredding alone won’t get you to a representative sample. We can discuss ways a large refinery would process this and allow you to get a decent sample by witnessing.

Remember the golden rule for using refineries. If you cannot produce a representative sample, send someone to witness.

 

[4metals]

Bump

Has there been any progress with this feedstock?

 

[kurtak]

I see the OP was last here on Friday so he is checking back in

Has there been any progress with this feedstock?

So hopefully he will chime in to let us know

IMO - because this new feedstock has IC chips (& other components) on them it makes no sense to me to put the boards through lye to remove solder mask in order to remove gold plating (under solder mask) by way of cyanide or iodine because you still have to process the IC chips &/or other components on the boards for the values in them

That requires other processes including but not limited to (depending on the components on the boards) shredding incineration milling & smelting

In other words it makes no sense to me to put the boards though a solder mask removal process - then a gold plating removal process - then another process to recover values in other components

The boards - from the start need to go though a process like this one ---------

https://www.advchem.com/videos/19-videos/64-acc-incineration-process
IF (the BIG IF) - ALL the boards are exactly the same then you can process one board (shed - incinerate - smelt - assay dore) to determine full board lot value (done on several boards as representative samples of full lot)

If all the boards are not exactly the same then the entire lot needs to go though the above video process

I have done this process (shed incinerate smelt) on smaller lots (plus/minus 100 pounds HIGH grade boards) & then sold the dore based on dore assay

It is how I determined whether to send a larger lot to a board smelter (in Minnesota) or sell direct to a board buyer

Edit to add; - from what the OP has posted (& all the boards are exactly the same) he can do this - he said he has a "small" shredder & he has a furnace - he can do the incineration in the same furnace as the furnace used for smelting (there is a milling process between the incineration & smelting) for small lot sampling (&/or single board assay) a small Harbor Freight cement mixer ($150) will work for the mill

Kurt

 

[4metals]

One option Golden was checking into was a solder strip solution which potentially could de-solder the boards by immersion and allow the IC's to drop off and be processed separately.

Feedback would be good.

 

[Ayham Hafez]

I'm posting here cause I tried to find a thread related to what I want to ask to avoid creating new thread.



In this video at 2:30 , we can notice that circuit board metal layers fully extracted by stripping other circuit board components such as fiberglass, without grinding or pyrolizing, anyone knows how they do that?