Okay.. I’m negative gold..

[Joeyc118]

Alright,
I haven’t been this fumbled since jiu jitsu.
I am about 3 heavy months in to this and a vast number of hours of learning. I’ve learned that refining gold jewelry is a lot more simple that the computer stuff. But I started with a dozen older laptops and then I received a telecom server and naturally being impatient I’ve been trying to recover gold along the way.
I’m not sure what has happened along the way but I’ve been staying on top of my stannous tests and yes, most of my solutions ended up dirty when I went to precipitate. I have not got rid of any of my water yet and my buckets are full of the normal stuff. Water, muriatic, nitric, smb, urea until I switched to sulfamic. I’ve put in copper and I started pouring off liquid and collecting the sludge on the bottom but some that I’ve tried to refine only had small amounts of gold. Throughout all of this I put in a couple ounces of silver and 8.8 grams of my own gold. I now have 6 grams of gold.

I understand a lot more info Is needed but my question is if there is a couple more common and known things that probably went wrong And honestly there should be a quarter to half ounce of gold somewhere. Any advice? I have a jug of nitric coming tomorrow and I’m about out of ideas. I will add that some solutions are still blue but lots of water and everything else in there.
Thank you!

 

[Shark]

Not to put you down but three months is not much time to expect perfect results. If all you lost was 2-3 grams with three months of study you done good. That is the reason for our “stockpot”. It is the storage place for when we learn more or better ways to get our gold back.

Dirty solutions is what you always start with. Refining is about removing that “dirty stuff” from our gold. Yes, the cleaner it is to start with the easier to get better results. But if it was perfectly clean we wouldn’t need to refine it.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Alright,
I haven’t been this fumbled since jiu jitsu.
I am about 3 heavy months in to this and a vast number of hours of learning. I’ve learned that refining gold jewelry is a lot more simple that the computer stuff. But I started with a dozen older laptops and then I received a telecom server and naturally being impatient I’ve been trying to recover gold along the way.
I’m not sure what has happened along the way but I’ve been staying on top of my stannous tests and yes, most of my solutions ended up dirty when I went to precipitate. I have not got rid of any of my water yet and my buckets are full of the normal stuff. Water, muriatic, nitric, smb, urea until I switched to sulfamic. I’ve put in copper and I started pouring off liquid and collecting the sludge on the bottom but some that I’ve tried to refine only had small amounts of gold. Throughout all of this I put in a couple ounces of silver and 8.8 grams of my own gold. I now have 6 grams of gold.

I understand a lot more info Is needed but my question is if there is a couple more common and known things that probably went wrong And honestly there should be a quarter to half ounce of gold somewhere. Any advice? I have a jug of nitric coming tomorrow and I’m about out of ideas. I will add that some solutions are still blue but lots of water and everything else in there.
Thank you!

What have you done with your solids?
Boards and other undissolved pieces?

 

[Joeyc118]

Not to put you down but three months is not much time to expect perfect results. If all you lost was 2-3 grams with three months of study you done good. That is the reason for our “stockpot”. It is the storage place for when we learn more or better ways to get our gold back.

Dirty solutions is what you always start with. Refining is about removing that “dirty stuff” from our gold. Yes, the cleaner it is to start with the easier to get better results. But if it was perfectly clean we wouldn’t need to refine it.

Well thank you for that response!

 

[Yggdrasil]

Alright,
I haven’t been this fumbled since jiu jitsu.
I am about 3 heavy months in to this and a vast number of hours of learning. I’ve learned that refining gold jewelry is a lot more simple that the computer stuff. But I started with a dozen older laptops and then I received a telecom server and naturally being impatient I’ve been trying to recover gold along the way.
I’m not sure what has happened along the way but I’ve been staying on top of my stannous tests and yes, most of my solutions ended up dirty when I went to precipitate. I have not got rid of any of my water yet and my buckets are full of the normal stuff. Water, muriatic, nitric, smb, urea until I switched to sulfamic. I’ve put in copper and I started pouring off liquid and collecting the sludge on the bottom but some that I’ve tried to refine only had small amounts of gold. Throughout all of this I put in a couple ounces of silver and 8.8 grams of my own gold. I now have 6 grams of gold.

I understand a lot more info Is needed but my question is if there is a couple more common and known things that probably went wrong And honestly there should be a quarter to half ounce of gold somewhere. Any advice? I have a jug of nitric coming tomorrow and I’m about out of ideas. I will add that some solutions are still blue but lots of water and everything else in there.
Thank you!

Do you have a response to my question?

 

[Joeyc118]

What have you done with your solids?
Boards and other undissolved pieces?

Ok so I would say I still have the majority of solids from the telecom. I can take pictures. I’m actually pretty bummed out because I took off maybe 50 of the four sided ic chips that you could see a ring of gold in the center. I had two boards with thousands of gold plated pins. And these very large gold plated oscillator looking things with mini boards in them. I’m not too concerned about the older stuff anymore but originally I had half a jar of pins collected.
I’m certain that I could have sold off instead and I haven’t researched for how much but I felt like the learning experience was more valuable.
I couldn’t help it and picked up a server from a thrift store yesterday and I was amazed. It looks almost as good as the telecom stuff did.
So basically all of the solids that went in to solution is dissolved down to a little sludge that I’ll do one last attempt and then after that I have no idea where it all went. I put an ounce and half of my own silver in there

 

[Yggdrasil]

Ok so I would say I still have the majority of solids from the telecom. I can take pictures. I’m actually pretty bummed out because I took off maybe 50 of the four sided ic chips that you could see a ring of gold in the center. I had two boards with thousands of gold plated pins. And these very large gold plated oscillator looking things with mini boards in them. I’m not too concerned about the older stuff anymore but originally I had half a jar of pins collected.
I’m certain that I could have sold off instead and I haven’t researched for how much but I felt like the learning experience was more valuable.
I couldn’t help it and picked up a server from a thrift store yesterday and I was amazed. It looks almost as good as the telecom stuff did.
So basically all of the solids that went in to solution is dissolved down to a little sludge that I’ll do one last attempt and then after that I have no idea where it all went. I put an ounce and half of my own silver in there

How did you treat your material before dissolution?
Be specific please!

 

[Joeyc118]

I just took some pictures to attach. the stuff In solution currently is just muriatic and I almost always started with that followed by a good rinse then diluted nitric and finally AR.
At one point early on I thought “well, I don’t think there’s much silver in this batch and I’m just going for gold so I’ll skip to diluted nitric and hurry this up.”
Everything though has eventually made its way in to the same buckets.

 

[Yggdrasil]

I just took some pictures to attach. the stuff In solution currently is just muriatic and I almost always started with that followed by a good rinse then diluted nitric and finally AR.
At one point early on I thought “well, I don’t think there’s much silver in this batch and I’m just going for gold so I’ll skip to diluted nitric and hurry this up.”
Everything though has eventually made its way in to the same buckets.

Why is the filter so full and why is it so black?

Different material needs different treatment.

Whole boards are or should never be processed whole, they need to be depopulated, if there are significant plating they should be put aside and later be processed with processes suited for plating.

Components need to be sorted and processed in batches with suitable methods as per the type.

Chips are pyrolized and ground before the remains are gravity sorted and then incinerated until ALL carbon is burnt away.
No carbon can be left, since it will capture some of your Gold.

Dissolving the Gold are done after ALL base metals are dissolved, if not, some of your Gold will cement out and may end up in inaccessible places in the components.

 

[orvi]

I just took some pictures to attach. the stuff In solution currently is just muriatic and I almost always started with that followed by a good rinse then diluted nitric and finally AR.
At one point early on I thought “well, I don’t think there’s much silver in this batch and I’m just going for gold so I’ll skip to diluted nitric and hurry this up.”
Everything though has eventually made its way in to the same buckets.

Obviously, from the steps you took and things you have done, you are on the start of your refining ventures
Allright, ... There is so much wrong in these pictures and in the description, I do not know where to start Do not take this as offense, but as critical opinion of somebody who refined sucessfuly (not hobby, for money) for many years.
1. If you are beginner, try proven and always working procedures and do not alter any steps of them. And do them precisely as they are written. Period. You cannot get your hands on chemistry in a right way, if you will do wrong things from the start and get used to them.
2.Never put whole boards into the acid and expect some magic trick to happen that all gold will be in solution If you look to this through theory, there is so much wrong things with this procedure that it hurts. Gold will cement on any other metal used in production of this board. Gold will be absorbed into the fiberglass of the board. Acid will attack resins and organic material and deplete oxidizing power of say AR - you will spend more of it etc...
3.Sequence of HCL->nitric->AR on this type of material is pointless since HCl only dissolve some aluminium, tin and lead and won´t touch the actuall mass of metal that you need to remove - copper, brass and bronze. Then you start rinsing - but as it is with porous or powdery materials - you never rinse all of it, due to physics and absorption. So some HCl will be stuck in the material, then you put nitric to it and allow the formation of weak AR - thus dissolving every metal on the boards.
4. As Yggdrasil said, gold will dissolve and re-precipitate on undissolved parts of base metals, which are over whole board. You cannot effectively cover all copper traces on board, also you cannot dissolve them completely without issues, as they are sprayed/dipped in lacquer. This is number one place where gold reprecipitates and due to low oxidizing power of acid in the cavity under the lacquer, it will stay there.
Garbage in garbage out. It imply here very well. Clean components, separate the actual material from junk, and plan your refining well.
Read the forum, treat your waste responsibly, use PPE and work safely
Good luck

 

[Joeyc118]

Why is the filter so full and why is it so black?

Different material needs different treatment.

Whole boards are or should never be processed whole, they need to be depopulated, if there are significant plating they should be put aside and later be processed with processes suited for plating.

Components need to be sorted and processed in batches with suitable methods as per the type.

Chips are pyrolized and ground before the remains are gravity sorted and then incinerated until ALL carbon is burnt away.
No carbon can be left, since it will capture some of your Gold.

Dissolving the Gold are done after ALL base metals are dissolved, if not, some of your Gold will cement out and may end up in inaccessible places in the components.

Oh I have a very good understanding of all of that. The black junk is from my waste buckets in my final attempts. I will say that I know now I didn’t incinerate some ic chips well enough but those were done separate from both pins and fingers.
I think I may have had the tiniest amounts along the way but when I got to a large final solution that I added my own gold to when I precipitated out I ended up with less. It’s possible the gold I added wasn’t 24k but honestly it would have been so close it’s hard to tell.

 

[Joeyc118]

Obviously, from the steps you took and things you have done, you are on the start of your refining ventures
Allright, ... There is so much wrong in these pictures and in the description, I do not know where to start Do not take this as offense, but as critical opinion of somebody who refined sucessfuly (not hobby, for money) for many years.
1. If you are beginner, try proven and always working procedures and do not alter any steps of them. And do them precisely as they are written. Period. You cannot get your hands on chemistry in a right way, if you will do wrong things from the start and get used to them.
2.Never put whole boards into the acid and expect some magic trick to happen that all gold will be in solution If you look to this through theory, there is so much wrong things with this procedure that it hurts. Gold will cement on any other metal used in production of this board. Gold will be absorbed into the fiberglass of the board. Acid will attack resins and organic material and deplete oxidizing power of say AR - you will spend more of it etc...
3.Sequence of HCL->nitric->AR on this type of material is pointless since HCl only dissolve some aluminium, tin and lead and won´t touch the actuall mass of metal that you need to remove - copper, brass and bronze. Then you start rinsing - but as it is with porous or powdery materials - you never rinse all of it, due to physics and absorption. So some HCl will be stuck in the material, then you put nitric to it and allow the formation of weak AR - thus dissolving every metal on the boards.
4. As Yggdrasil said, gold will dissolve and re-precipitate on undissolved parts of base metals, which are over whole board. You cannot effectively cover all copper traces on board, also you cannot dissolve them completely without issues, as they are sprayed/dipped in lacquer. This is number one place where gold reprecipitates and due to low oxidizing power of acid in the cavity under the lacquer, it will stay there.
Garbage in garbage out. It imply here very well. Clean components, separate the actual material from junk, and plan your refining well.
Read the forum, treat your waste responsibly, use PPE and work safely
Good luck

So I’ve never put in an entire board. I’ve only done pins, well I allowed some parts similar to pins, plastic ic chips, ceramic ones were separate, fingers.
At one point after nitric I added all my gold fouls from fingers to a jar that was full of a bunch of gold to do a final ar with both.
Maybe these pictures were not the best from today. I’ll add some random progression pics. As I look through them though I see I didn’t take any good ones Along the way that would help answer questions.
I mean if we talk processes I feel like I could talk for hours and regurgitate a lot of good info. That’s why I’m so confused. I added my 8 grams to a jar that had a ton of gold flakes and out came 6 grams.
I mean I got nervous and put copper in when I couldn’t find it all but I’ve seen how it cements on the sides and you can spray it off. I can’t figure it out.

 

[Joeyc118]

Oh I have a very good understanding of all of that. The black junk is from my waste buckets in my final attempts. I will say that I know now I didn’t incinerate some ic chips well enough but those were done separate from both pins and fingers.
I think I may have had the tiniest amounts along the way but when I got to a large final solution that I added my own gold to when I precipitated out I ended up with less. It’s possible the gold I added wasn’t 24k but honestly it would have been so close it’s hard to tell.

Let me add one more thing. The chips that had gold sticking out of the sides, what I did was hit them with a hammer then pulled them apart exposing all of the gold wires then threw both parts in nitric followed by ar later on. Well all those parts are white so I pulled out each one and sprayed off. I still have them but I cannot see how anything could be cemented on those.
When I get home tonight I’m going to take that black crap from the waste, that is currently in hcl, and see if maybe all my gold and silver is in there.
If anyone wants to watch a video chat or call I absolutely invite you to.

 

[Joeyc118]

If anyone is curious basically where I’m at is I started thinking maybe inside those awesome looking four sides ic chips were like an aluminum or steel plate. Most of them were black or white when I took them out of the solution. So I though “duh, maybe the gold cemented on to those.”
So I grab them and some used filter papers from when I first started and thought in case any old nitric I’ll get the party started by a bath of muriatic. Bad ideas. Instantly heated to a ridiculous temp and boiling up and out to the point I grabbed a shovel and scooped all the dirt that was below the jar.
So if anyone has anything to add about gold cementing I’d love to hear about it.

 

[nickton]

Why did you add so much of your own gold?

 

[Joeyc118]

Why did you add so much of your own gold?

I’m glad you asked. Two reasons. At the time I thought to myself I was just refining it again to make it more pure which was silly and second was to help with excess nitric.
Still no luck finding the majority of everything. I got all of what I assume were aluminum plates that maybe the gold cemented to. Black powder on all of them for sure. I thought I’d start with a nice muriatic bath. Once that started erupting in to the dirt I grabbed a shovel so now I need to figure out what I’ll do about that

 

[nickton]

It sounds like maybe you mixed up some of the processes here. The pictures don't look too bad though. I really don't see any reason to add your own karat gold unless you want to refine it via inquarting.
First of all I wouldn't try processing ic chips yet. Set them aside and either sell them to board sort or save for after you have successfully done more basic processing. It is too messy to mess with yet IMO.
Next keep all plated pins separate and don't process them with fingers or other circuit board bits. They may look shiny and golden, but they only have minimal electroplating and always have disappointing yields. You don' t want to put them in AP bubbler baths since it will take an eternity to fully dissolve base metals.

 

[nickton]

Another thing. It really takes a long time to accumulate enough e waste scrap to make it worthwhile to refine. It took me two years to get the pile I'm doing now. You also want to remove tantalum capacitors and those tiny mlccs. Its a very tedious process.

Good luck though.

 

[Martijn]

Once that started erupting in to the dirt I grabbed a shovel so now I need to figure out what I’ll do about that

You need a safe workspace and catch basin to avoid polluting you own 'bed' and your neighbors soil, groundwater etc.
You need safe working procedures thought out.
Write down how to perform a task, what can go wrong and how to avoid these situations. Second, think about how to minimize health and material damage as a result of an incident in case any do occur.

But in short: STOP! And go study. Ask before you try anything!

Start with reading and perfoming acquaintance tests described by hoke or look up for videos of chemical reactions.. before trying them out on a way to large scale and maybe survive... Don't gambe with your life.

 

[Joeyc118]

Ok so I’m almost done with this batch and yeah I’m putting it all away after. But I have a quick question. I got all the dirt together that’s maybe full of precipitated gold. I got it down to almost looking like a beaker full of gold mud. I gave it some muriatic baths and rinses then put on heat and muriatic then nitric and figured I would just make the AR in there and filter out gold.
Round 1 went great actually. Used excess nitric so I decided to use some of the same solution for mud jar 2 when ready. So I do same thing. I add the AR with some gold. Stannis test isn’t going crazy but it shows. Then I put the mud with a little muriatic still in it and add some AR.
I let it heat to about a boil then settle. The solution is still yellow but more yellow. Less than the orange solution with gold. Stannis test is clear. Did the gold precipitate out for some reason? And weird but I guess makes sense why the solution is still yellow. I only have drops of nitric left.