New to the game in Southern California

[MrBurritoMan]

Hello,

I am new to this and am located in Southern California. I have been in the IT Consulting field for many years now and have a continuous supply of e-waste along with a decent stock pile for right now.

My goal with this is just to have a setup that I can run every once and a while when I get enough volume backed up.

I think it would be hilarious to have 1:1 scale gold and silver Lego bricks just for the heck of it. More or less I am just tired of giving the precious metals away to other people more industrious than myself.

I have been thinking about my process for recycling the scrap and with the information I am getting from Hoke's book and everyone on the site it seems that a revision might be necessary however I am still learning so who knows right now. For now here is what I have:

All waste goes into a shredder to allow better separation of materials. I am designing a model similar to the one below that should be able to handle half of a motherboard without any trouble.

From there the process the e-waste mulch with Nitric Acid to remove the base metals, rinse off the solids left behind then process with AR to dissolve all of the gold left behind. I would then like to precipitate all possible metals from the two solutions and recycle the ones that I don't want to keep (Gold, silver, copper, aluminum, platinum, palladium, and a few more I can't remember right now).

That is the rough outline of my plan, are there any glaring problems with it? I am very open to feedback as I would like to not make expensive sludge, eventually I would like to get something that I can smelt.

Thanks guys!

 

[Pantherlikher]

Hey there from the East coast... Pennsylvania

Sounds like you have an idea that others have explored... I'm sure others will add and share what they've found.

As far as shredding everything. I'd read about the "easy stuff" and how to get that well before just making a big mess to sift through.

You said you'd start with Nitric. To me, that would not be cost effective as HCl is cheaper and will remove tin and lead. 2 bad boys to deal with that can be troublesome.

From what I'm finding out demanufacturing everything and anything, it's best to remove as much unwanted crap first before diving into the good stuff. I also been reading all about dealing with the base metals before they become a problem.

I'd start with collecting fingers...not your own in the grinder... then pins and any chips like flat backs.

It seems like alot to take 1 item at a time but it's alot easier and faster then just grinding away and making the Soup to deal with.

If you have the capabilites and space to devote to going large scale, then have at it and always keep in mind the volume of waste.

I've always been leaning toward a quick and easy depopulating method. Get it all off the board and then seperate into different processes. To me, it sounds like less work and mess overall.

Just my 2 tin cents though so good luck and post what you find yourself getting into.

B.S.
...Your way is never the only way and probably not always the right way...

 

[MrBurritoMan]

Hey there from the East coast... Pennsylvania

Sounds like you have an idea that others have explored... I'm sure others will add and share what they've found.

As far as shredding everything. I'd read about the "easy stuff" and how to get that well before just making a big mess to sift through. ...

The thing is I am not just interested in Gold and Silver but, if possible, all metals (yes, even lead). I would like to be able to separate them all out even in trace amounts. Is this too crazy to accomplish?

... You said you'd start with Nitric. To me, that would not be cost effective as HCl is cheaper and will remove tin and lead. 2 bad boys to deal with that can be troublesome. ...

10-4 good idea there. Is it possible to then recover the tin and lead from this solution? I am about 25% of the way through Hoke's book right now so I am not sure if this is covered.

... From what I'm finding out demanufacturing everything and anything, it's best to remove as much unwanted crap first before diving into the good stuff. I also been reading all about dealing with the base metals before they become a problem. ...

This is my initial goal until I can get the next step laid out and ready to go. I am trying to remove as much iron, steel and plastic as possible. For all I care the city can have these metals to recycle.

 

[squarecoinman]

Mr Buritoman welcome to the forum, I must say i love the shredder It looks very nice. and i fully understand the urge of having metal lego bricks I also would like to have them in Gold and silver.

When you drive from Berlin to Paris the shortest way would be in a straight line. You would however have to drive trough houses, lakes, forest over fields. Most cars do not like to drive in lakes. Therefore the shortest way on a map ( straight line ) may not be the fastest way. Most people will take the motorway.

Your plan of putting all in a shredder can be done, but it is not a good idea, when you take the motherboard out of the computer, you may as well remove the heat sink, and put that in your pile with Alu. and since you have free access you can take of the CPU , no reason to smash that up , when you are at it, take out the RAM, when not smashed they are more easy to cut the fingers of and to process. etc etc ( you can use search and read more about it ) most people can do this in less then 4 minutes

If you choose to do it your way ( make a nitric soup with all kind of weird stuff in it ) it will be a mess. I will try to explain
If you would take all the text that you have written the last 6 months on Facebook, on this forum, on your work and also all small notes you have made together with all information you have read on the internet the last 6 months we print this all out in RTF and then put the pages in a super good shredder a few times, leaving you with a pile of paper scrap. See everything is still there but you can not read it. If you would spend a lot of time you could maybe retrieve some of the information but it would be very hard and time consuming.

To answer your question, yes one can retrieve the lead ( if you read more on the forum you will find out how ) but for now I would read all of Hoke and also study the safety part very well, to many people get hurt by using nitric and other chemicals ) when you have done that start with an AP tank when you master that go to the next step.


scm

 

[butcher]

Nice shredder, bad idea.

 

[Pantherlikher]

Ok... enough of saying how bad the idea is. You can still use that shredder. Like pushing Same chips into it for processing.
Read and learn different methods for different pieces and you will find good places to use a shredder that size.

Also being in the technology field and having access to everything... Make sure you save and resell anything worth reusing. Everything is worth more if there is a market or need or collectible.

Spend some time pondering ways to Desolder boards. Removing all the tin and depopulating boards is the first and can be difficult thing to dig into.

B.S.
...If it's not hard, it's no fun...

 

[MrBurritoMan]

Ok... enough of saying how bad the idea is. You can still use that shredder. Like pushing Same chips into it for processing.
Read and learn different methods for different pieces and you will find good places to use a shredder that size. ...

This is basically the method that I was going for. I am not going to shove the entire motherboard with all of its components, ram, CPU and add-on cards plugged in; that would be ********. The aluminium as well as easy to get copper (transformers and choke coils) has provided some of the easier to get walking around money that this project has needed. Honestly the shredder was a way for me to avoid having to burn anything as I don't want to vaporize all of that hazardous material.

...Also being in the technology field and having access to everything... Make sure you save and resell anything worth reusing. Everything is worth more if there is a market or need or collectible. ...

I have been doing this and it has provided this project some walking around money, not a whole lot (because most of what I get is completely thrashed), just some.

...Spend some time pondering ways to Desolder boards. Removing all the tin and depopulating boards is the first and can be difficult thing to dig into.

B.S.
...If it's not hard, it's no fun...

This last suggestion may be the thing I could start looking over that I have no idea about.