ello there folks,
this is a total noobz from south Italy here with his
lousy indeed experience. :-(
Today i woke up and said, "hey lets go, and after reading
trough almost all topics here and there, lets do some refining.
I had a 210 grams - 7 ounces- of plated pins stripped off from
the very usual parts such as connectors from hard drives, dvd
and cd rom reader and some pins fetched on other kinda connectors.
I was happy, tough i knew already the yeld was not going to be
something to change my life but hey, you never know, tough i expected
at least a 1:100 ratio yeld, meaning that 200 grams or so of
plated pins would give me at least 2 grams of wonder dust
My equipment - and here i know everyone will start booein' or sayin' any sort of
joke, but trust me, i had much difficulties buying reagents and other stuff like pyrex
flasks and so on that i had to go trough a one month pay and wait e-bay thing.
- 1 glass container approx 600 ml
- HCl, 36% bought from they bay
- Nitric Acid, 60% bought from the same as above.
- a 100 ml graduated flask for measuring.
- No respirator
- everything performed outside
- AR 400 ml
I mixed 1 part - 100 ml - of Nitric and 3 parts of HCl and......gosh, i never smelled smthing so nasty in my life. Plus i had the sillyness to take a little sniff before mixing and if the Nitric was kinda bearable, the HCl "snort" was almost deadly: cough, red eyes, i had to ran out of my little cellar and stay out to breathe for almost 5 mins, and when coming on, i could still smell a bit of this flippin caustic thing.
1 thing learned, start mixing the reagents *OUTSIDE* if you dont have a fume hood and a respirator.
I obtained then, first a yellowish mix that turned soon on a bronze, orange color, observing a little amount of NOx that was yet forming.....an d it was still in the glass jar without anything inside!!!!
So, with my goggles, my kitchen long gloves and a long shirt i walked in the woods to perform the "magic"
When there, i opened the jar and.....ouch, a bad bad smell came out the jar but soon went away cuz i was behind the jar with "tailwind" blowing all that sick smell away from me tough sometimes - even without not putting any scrap inside the jar, some strange chlorine, Nox, Uranium or what the heck was smell was still around there. I kept myself for a couple of minutes standing almost 6 meters - 18 ft - away and it was *kinda ok*.
Now, i saw no Nox coming out -at least seemed - and i took a big breathe, took my scrap and i started dumping them in the deadly Aqua Regia mix.
I noticed that first, putting very little amounts time per time, with 30 seconds intervals, not much Nox was forming and also the temp of the jar was kinda ok, considered that this morning here we have 35 °C degs, so i suppose around 90 °F.
Then the yokel me did the rest.
Seeing that things were goin quite ok - tough i am still having irritated nose feeling - the AR was working and i decided to dump *EVERYTHING* in one sitting.
Tragedy.
After 40 seconds or so, everything started bubbling hard, the level of the mix was rising in the jar, the NOx fumes building hard - and i had to run another 10 meters away to save my life - and kaboom, everything erupted....but i was almost 50 meters away....everything lost obviously.
Now, i dont much care of the 200 grams of pins lost, after all i think that it wasnt a great loss and i can make it again because i got a steady supply of old e-scrap; i saved also 50 old cell phones boards, 50 ram sticks, another 500 grams of computer cards fingers and 30 processors stripped of from old computers, so i think that *NEXT* time things will be different much more.
Besides the funny -not much funny tough i feel a lil weird , but that must be the nervs and the double espresso and 3 ciggs i smoked in 1 hour
What wrong after all?
- too much AR made? 400 ml i think was indeed far too much for 200 grams of plated pins.
- I tried the AP mode once and it was quite nifty, clean and with almost no harm. Do you you think i should go on with the AP from now on? The Nitric the NOx and the water i gotta say, scared me a little bit - i am an ex paratrooper for 20 years, with 4000 launches and trust me, there's few things i get scared of -
- Suggestions or reccomendationsof any sorts are well welcome, of any kind!
Thanks a lot for every response to this post and also to the admin that created this.
Padre
this is a total noobz from south Italy here with his
lousy indeed experience. :-(
Today i woke up and said, "hey lets go, and after reading
trough almost all topics here and there, lets do some refining.
I had a 210 grams - 7 ounces- of plated pins stripped off from
the very usual parts such as connectors from hard drives, dvd
and cd rom reader and some pins fetched on other kinda connectors.
I was happy, tough i knew already the yeld was not going to be
something to change my life but hey, you never know, tough i expected
at least a 1:100 ratio yeld, meaning that 200 grams or so of
plated pins would give me at least 2 grams of wonder dust
My equipment - and here i know everyone will start booein' or sayin' any sort of
joke, but trust me, i had much difficulties buying reagents and other stuff like pyrex
flasks and so on that i had to go trough a one month pay and wait e-bay thing.
- 1 glass container approx 600 ml
- HCl, 36% bought from they bay
- Nitric Acid, 60% bought from the same as above.
- a 100 ml graduated flask for measuring.
- No respirator
- everything performed outside
- AR 400 ml
I mixed 1 part - 100 ml - of Nitric and 3 parts of HCl and......gosh, i never smelled smthing so nasty in my life. Plus i had the sillyness to take a little sniff before mixing and if the Nitric was kinda bearable, the HCl "snort" was almost deadly: cough, red eyes, i had to ran out of my little cellar and stay out to breathe for almost 5 mins, and when coming on, i could still smell a bit of this flippin caustic thing.
1 thing learned, start mixing the reagents *OUTSIDE* if you dont have a fume hood and a respirator.
I obtained then, first a yellowish mix that turned soon on a bronze, orange color, observing a little amount of NOx that was yet forming.....an d it was still in the glass jar without anything inside!!!!
So, with my goggles, my kitchen long gloves and a long shirt i walked in the woods to perform the "magic"
When there, i opened the jar and.....ouch, a bad bad smell came out the jar but soon went away cuz i was behind the jar with "tailwind" blowing all that sick smell away from me tough sometimes - even without not putting any scrap inside the jar, some strange chlorine, Nox, Uranium or what the heck was smell was still around there. I kept myself for a couple of minutes standing almost 6 meters - 18 ft - away and it was *kinda ok*.
Now, i saw no Nox coming out -at least seemed - and i took a big breathe, took my scrap and i started dumping them in the deadly Aqua Regia mix.
I noticed that first, putting very little amounts time per time, with 30 seconds intervals, not much Nox was forming and also the temp of the jar was kinda ok, considered that this morning here we have 35 °C degs, so i suppose around 90 °F.
Then the yokel me did the rest.
Seeing that things were goin quite ok - tough i am still having irritated nose feeling - the AR was working and i decided to dump *EVERYTHING* in one sitting.
Tragedy.
After 40 seconds or so, everything started bubbling hard, the level of the mix was rising in the jar, the NOx fumes building hard - and i had to run another 10 meters away to save my life - and kaboom, everything erupted....but i was almost 50 meters away....everything lost obviously.
Now, i dont much care of the 200 grams of pins lost, after all i think that it wasnt a great loss and i can make it again because i got a steady supply of old e-scrap; i saved also 50 old cell phones boards, 50 ram sticks, another 500 grams of computer cards fingers and 30 processors stripped of from old computers, so i think that *NEXT* time things will be different much more.
Besides the funny -not much funny tough i feel a lil weird , but that must be the nervs and the double espresso and 3 ciggs i smoked in 1 hour
What wrong after all?
- too much AR made? 400 ml i think was indeed far too much for 200 grams of plated pins.
- I tried the AP mode once and it was quite nifty, clean and with almost no harm. Do you you think i should go on with the AP from now on? The Nitric the NOx and the water i gotta say, scared me a little bit - i am an ex paratrooper for 20 years, with 4000 launches and trust me, there's few things i get scared of
-- Suggestions or reccomendationsof any sorts are well welcome, of any kind!
Thanks a lot for every response to this post and also to the admin that created this.
Padre
