Platinum Recovery From Ceramic Processors

[Tzoax]

After processing 41 pieces of ceramic Pentium MMX processors with aqua regia and dropped the gold with smb, I decided to cement the rest with aluminum and take the material to XRF test. The results are in the picture 1.

There seems to be a considerable percentage of platinum, so I started to collect the same material from all different types of ceramic processors. Right now I have 135 grams of material from 190 pieces of ceramic processors.
The types and quantity of processors are shown in the table below. I also put in the table the amount of gold that I obtained. I also recovered the gold from lids and get 1.3 grams of gold from 59g of lids (22.03 grams of gold per kilogram of lids or 0.022g of gold per gram of the lids).

Pcs Total gold Avg. by piece Lids Weight /piece
MMX 20 1.1 0.0550 /
MMX 21 1.3 0.0619 /
K6 19 0.7 0.0368 /
AMD 40 1.4 0.0350 /
AMD 20 0.9 0.0450 /
Intel 486 12 1.6 0.1333 1.58
AMD 486 12 1.3 0.1083 0.9
K5(+cap) 7 1.3 0.1857 1.81
IBM 686 9 1.1 0.1222 /
Intel pentium 4 0.8 0.2000 1.77
Intel PRO 4 0.8 0.2000 /
K5(-cap) 4 0.7 0.1750 1.85
Cyrix 686 4 0.3 0.0750 /


There are two exeptions, 40 pieces of AMD and 4 pieces of Cyrix 686 - I made a mistake and I couldn't drop the material with aluminum. So, this 135 grams of material are from all the rest of processors (146 pieces).
On the picture 2 and 3 is the look of actual material pictured with and without a flashlight.


I need help how to continue the process.

My basic idea is to:
1. boil the material several times with destilled water and filter
2. boil the material in HCl several times and filter
3. boil the material several times with destilled water and filter
4. incinerate the material
5. let it react with dilluted HNO3 and filter, (I will save the liquid with silver nitrate for later recovery of silver)
6. aqua regia and precipitate platinum with ammonium chloride

I will post the data with pictures as I working, any suggestion and help is welcome. Thank You.

 

[solar_plasma]

...gramm...kilogramm...€...$...nBananas? Could you please write the units behind your numbers? My eyes are getting older and the numbers look like postal codes.

On the assay there is written "qualitative analysis", does this mean, that the numbers do not say much about the quantity of content, but only show positive or negative?

Does a stannous test confirm any platinum? What part can it come from?

 

[Tzoax]

...gramm...kilogramm...€...$...nBananas? Could you please write the units behind your numbers? My eyes are getting older and the numbers look like postal codes.

On the assay there is written "qualitative analysis", does this mean, that the numbers do not say much about the quantity of content, but only show positive or negative?

Does a stannous test confirm any platinum? What part can it come from?

Here it is...sorry for the numbers, the space between the numbers was automatically shortened when I posted it.

The results from the test is shown in percentages. It means that there is about 4.5 % of platinum in the material. The sample I tested is from 41 pieces of ceramic MMX. I have 135g of the material, so I hope that there should be about 5-6 grams of platinum.

 

[solar_plasma]

Nice work! Thanks for sharing.

I am sceptic where the platinum should come from. I would take a sample, wash it free of base metals, then treat it by AR and test by stannous. Very small amounts of platinum will give orange color.

 

[kurtak]

Was the XRF test done on powders like you pictured - or on melted metal button/bar :?:

If it was on powders I would not count on the results being anything you can count on :!: :!: :!:

Kurt

 

[Tzoax]

Nice work! Thanks for sharing.

I am sceptic where the platinum should come from. I would take a sample, wash it free of base metals, then treat it by AR and test by stannous. Very small amounts of platinum will give orange color.

Thank You, eventually I will do that. In the meanwhile I will picture exactly every step that I take. I know that platinum is there in the ceramic processors, the only question is how much... the result should be some middle value of platinum in mixed ceramic processors. At the end I will divide the number of processors I used for the material and the amount of obtained platinum and that would show me the approximate value (Pt) of one mixed ceramic processor. And of course to see if it is even worth processing the Pt from ceramic cpus.

 

[Tzoax]

Was the XRF test done on powders like you pictured - or on melted metal button/bar :?:

If it was on powders I would not count on the results being anything you can count on :!: :!: :!:

Kurt

I crushed one sample of powder in the very fine powder and that was tested. I know that it is not accurate but eventually i will see how much (if any of Pt) is there.

 

[solar_plasma]

Plausiblity check: Generations of e-scrap prospectors have processed MMX CPU's and no one ever should have discovered the platinum when he checked his barren solution after gold precipitation? But you KNOW it is there. The only thing you KNOW is, that your XRF used on a powder, which it isn't designed for, reported platinum. This could have more than one reason.

That does not mean, there is no platinum. But if it is there, I would bet on other sources, where it came from, then those MMX.

 

[solar_plasma]

How many times "my" ion mobility spectrometer reported VX or chlorine, but it's only a cross sensitivity. Otherwise I would not be able to write this.

 

[Tzoax]

Plausiblity check: Generations of e-scrap prospectors have processed MMX CPU's and no one ever should have discovered the platinum when he checked his barren solution after gold precipitation? But you KNOW it is there. The only thing you KNOW is, that your XRF used on a powder, which it isn't designed for, reported platinum. This could have more than one reason.

That does not mean, there is no platinum. But if it is there, I would bet on other sources, where it came from, then those MMX.

Maybe You are right, but I will only know for sure at the end, I will get rid of base elements and try to recover platinum, then the XRF test will be more precise. After all, the XRF test shows that there is no gold, like there isn't because I precipitated it, and that there is a 4.5% of platinum, maybe it is not accurate but thats why I believe there is a platinum, otherwise the mistakes of XRF would be selective and that doesn't make a sense to me. More likely there is some platinum, just my opinion.

 

[jungle_Dave]

Would be interesting to see, hope there is some platinum for you in the material.

Complements on your record keeping as well !

 

[Tzoax]

Would be interesting to see, hope there is some platinum for you in the material.

Complements on your record keeping as well !

Thank You very much. Today I will start to remove the base metals and I will keep You updated.

 

[kurtak]

The only thing you KNOW is, that your XRF used on a powder, which it isn't designed for, reported platinum.

Solar is correct on this

An XRF is NOT designed for testing powders - it is designed for testing sold metals & alloys of metals

with powder there are hundreds (or thousands) of surfaces for the ray to bounce off of which confuses it --- at best it will give you an idea of what "might" be in it

Melt a button (or bar) & test that

Kurt

 

[AUH-R]

Is there any reason you used aluminium instead of copper to cement out the precious metals?

 

[Tzoax]

Is there any reason you used aluminium instead of copper to cement out the precious metals?

Thank You, maybe I should use Cu to cement at first place, that way I would have much less unnecessary elements in powder. Thanks, next time I will use copper.

 

[Anonymous]

I also recovered the gold from lids and get 1.3 grams of gold from 59g of lids (22.03 grams of gold per kilogram of lids or 0.022g of gold per gram of the lids).

I would suggest from experience that your yields are on the low side from the ceramic lids. How are you processing these?

Regards

Jon

 

[Tzoax]

I also recovered the gold from lids and get 1.3 grams of gold from 59g of lids (22.03 grams of gold per kilogram of lids or 0.022g of gold per gram of the lids).

I would suggest from experience that your yields are on the low side from the ceramic lids. How are you processing these?

Regards

Jon

I process the ceramic lids first with dilluted nitric acid - 50% destilled water, 50% nitric acid, then I filter the foils, then aqua regia and precipitate the gold with SMB. I thought that 22g of gold per kilogram of lids is a good yield. What is Your way of processing it?

 

[Anonymous]

It's a great yield. Until I actually began to process the lids I never realised how good they were. Many people had claimed that the yield was around 6g per Kg and I was assuming that they were correct. I could not have been more wrong.

I'm pretty sure that your way of doing it is perfectly fine too. I put them in AR, and when the reaction has finished (and boy is it vigorous) I pour off the liquid which is barren because the gold has cemented. Then I do it again, and again, (as required until most of the metal is gone) and the final fresh AR solution takes in the gold, with a lot less impurities than trying to dissolve the whole lot into the first solution.

Regards

Jon

 

[Tzoax]

It's a great yield. Until I actually began to process the lids I never realised how good they were. Many people had claimed that the yield was around 6g per Kg and I was assuming that they were correct. I could not have been more wrong.

I'm pretty sure that your way of doing it is perfectly fine too. I put them in AR, and when the reaction has finished (and boy is it vigorous) I pour off the liquid which is barren because the gold has cemented. Then I do it again, and again, (as required until most of the metal is gone) and the final fresh AR solution takes in the gold, with a lot less impurities than trying to dissolve the whole lot into the first solution.

Regards

Jon

Thank You, I never tried that way. I tried many times to process the motherboard pins and plactic processors pins that way but only with first solution of AR. Since the ceramic lids have no solder I thought that would be better way.

 

[Tzoax]

Today and yesterday I was boiling in destilled water and filtering the powder, and there seems there is no end, the particles that goes thru the filter eventually settles down, and I dont see that the water is clearer. Obviously the particles are so small that filtering is no option.
My guess is that it is form of iron chlorides - rust.
I will wait the powder to settle, decant the water and continue with process.

I was thinking is it a good idea to boil in HCl first, prior the incineration and nitric, and I concluded there is no need for that, the HCl will not dissolve tin because it is not in metal shape, so today I will expose the powder directly to diluted nitric.