OK, I got my first batch of foils out of the HCL/peroxide

[Daniel]

There are some chips of green in with the foil. It is small (tiny) pieces of the circut board. I wanted to melt these foils into a lump and save it that way until I get enough of them to start refining. Can I just flux it and burn the green stuff out or do I need to leave this alone and save it as it is and use AR as my next step?

I dropped my crushed CPU's and processors in as one batch after I had the fingers out. I plan to save the "tailings" to further crush and run in clean AR to see if it is worth the trouble.

I have a smaller batch going for pins. I removed the pins from carriers, but I wonder if they can they be run with the plastic housings still on?

 

[lazersteve]

Daniel,

The foils are easily cleaned of debris by first rinsing 3-4 times with HCl followed by 3-4 rinses of water. You know you have all the copper out when the rinses are crystal clear.

These foils will dissolve very easily in HCl-Cl, HCl-Peroxide, or AR. Once dissolved you can pour the gold chloride liquid off of the solid trash. Rinse the trash a few times with water to get all the gold chloride out. On the last rinse you can wash the debris thru a set of coffee filters. Combine all the rinses with the gold chloride solution.

I have had good success processing the headers without removing the plastic housings. The drawback to processing the pins in AP (Acid Peroxide) is that the copper pins tend to decay and fall into the gold foils. These require more HCl rinses to clean up. I'm posting a new tutorial tonight that shows how to process larger quantities of pins in the cell.

Did you take any photos? Did you have any problems with fumes? Did you develop any shortcuts of your own?

Steve

 

[Daniel]

I did not take any photos. This was a complete experiment for me, I just figured I was gonna have to do it to be able to follow along in the forums any better.

I had no problems with fumes since I have a detached shop. For many days now it has been dry here with no chance of rain so I left the bucket in direct sunlight next to the shop during the day.

I started out with HCL alone, it eventully started to cause gold foil to come off but was very slow. I let it soak in HCL for about 5.5 days.

I decided to add peroxide in the mix and when I looked at the HCL I noticed it was more concentrated from evaporation. I added only 1 bottle of peroxide. The reaction was almost instant and about 28 hours later all my foils were loose. Some did require slight scrubbing with a brush, but I do mean slight as the foil was just kinda stuck a bit.

I think I will wait to wash the foils once I have a bit more to work with. I have around 2 grams of foils, the dry filter and all the foils weighs 3.4 grams, the filter itself weighs 1.1 grams and I hope I have .3 or less in trash... time will tell. I wish I had weighed the fingers before I started but I got excited and forgot.

I noticed a problem with the CPU's and processors this morning and I'm going to start a new thread about that. I think I have a copper precip in there and my gold looks copper plated. I need to go snap some shots of it.

Thanks Steve