Processing Black IC's - The wet way.

[publius]

I am here to learn. I take personal responsibility for my actions. I want all the safety tips I can stuff into my head. I vote to keep this thread as is.

Additionally, I have posted, as have others, about the dangers of relying on a respirator when using NHO3. Others have warned of the dangers of Cyanide compounds and processes.

sulphuric acid can cause horrid burns and as noted, damage to lungs and eyes that's almost immediate. Cyanide can cause instant death.

I would rather know of the dangers and make my own choice to use a process or not.

Keeping this treat and others like it will benefit rather than hurt the members here.

 

[niteliteone]

I was first taught the process of wet ashing in my science class in 7th grade. (1975) We were shown the proper ways to do it as safely as can be done.
Now 35 years later I see it can be used to process IC's.
Don't know why I didn't think of it sooner.

But after seeing Patnors process I see it as a safer process for most people than this one. Especially for most people who have not had formal training in handling strong acids.
In my opinion nitric acid is much more dangerous than sulfuric at any temperature and we give all kinds of warnings about the nitric fumes. They can kill you without leaving a visible mark on you.
Why don't we ban all talk of nitric :?:

This process has a place on this forum but people must take proper precautions themselves. Now that the proceedure is made public we need to talk about safety, not should we just delete it or not.
This is about the same as the process given for recovering values from filters and not much different than concentrating acid for the gold cell, where we are actually given instructions how to concentrate the acid and be safe.

I would rather see proper safety taught than to keep quiet and let people learn the process without proper instruction. Keep the topic, just give full instructions that include safety.

Just my opinion
Tom C.

 

[samuel-a]

I would rather see proper safety taught than to keep quiet and let people learn the process without proper instruction. Keep the topic, just give full instructions that include safety.

I have tried to cover every angle in regards to safety in the original post.
Steve added some more notes later.

If you can think of anything else, do share it with us.

 

[philddreamer]

I vote to keep it.
It has been explained very well, by the experts, the pro's & con's of the process.
I don't think I'll be using the process, I'll incenarate; BUT, anyone that does, knows that will suffer serious consequences if something goes wrong. We've ALL been warned!

ALL the processes we do for recovery & refining the PM's ARE extremely dangerous!

Kindly,

Phil

 

[patnor1011]

Reverse electroplating involve hot concentrated sulphuric too. Fumes can burn your skin not to mention lungs too. I do not consider this process as viable for doing bigger amounts of chips due to risk associated. However if you have tens of kilograms of chips and want to use this process there is one way how to make it much safer. I had discussion with Sucho and he told me that he would consider using this method only when performed in reactor made from titanium - no risk of breaking. It is some kind of special titanium alloy.
So my advice is do not try it if you do not have proper set up to perform reaction in safe way. Dont forget sulfuric fumes can burn your skin in the same way as direct contact.

Btw. did not we mentioned "Do NOT boil acid" countless times?

 

[lazersteve]

One major difference is that the sulfuric acid in the stripping cell doesn't ever reach 250C+ and does not emit thick white clouds of gaseous SO3 like the reaction described above does. Hot acids are all bad, but 250C+ sulfuric acid is especially nasty due to the copious amounts of thick white SO3 that is produced.

Steve

 

[publius]

I am here to learn. I take personal responsibility for my actions. I want all the safety tips I can stuff into my head. I vote to keep this thread as is.

Additionally, I have posted, as have others, about the dangers of relying on a respirator when using NHO3. Others have warned of the dangers of Cyanide compounds and processes.

sulphuric acid can cause horrid burns and as noted, damage to lungs and eyes that's almost immediate. Cyanide can cause instant death.

I would rather know of the dangers and make my own choice to use a process or not.

Keeping this tread ad others like it will benefit rather than hurt the members here.

 

[niteliteone]

I would rather know of the dangers and make my own choice to use a process or not.

8) 8) 8)

 

[27182]

My two cents from the peanut gallery.

This is a familiar dilemma in education.
Do educators have a responsibility for their students' safety after they've gone on to do whatever it is they will? Certainly.
Will some person see this thread someday and attempt this method? Almost certainly.
Will one or more of those hapless individuals harm themselves, or worse, another? It's a possibility.
Does responsibility lie upon those in this thread who've published the information, along with appropriate warnings? I think not.

In my opinion it is worse to omit the information; here's why. As someone said earlier, this cat is out of the bag so to speak. If one looks hard enough, or thinks about it long enough, they will wind up with this information in one form or another. Intelligent people are curious. Better that they should have the information from knowledgeable sources than by discovery or from lesser sources.

The alternative is to teach a subset of what is known, leaving the responsibility of learning the most dangerous parts of their craft to the individual, even discouraging questions.
People, companies, and institutions think/hope that they can avoid being held accountable (and they sometimes can avoid financial responsibility) by simply dis-avowing any knowledge of the subject, dismissing it as dangerous, and denouncing those who advocate it. This is morally wrong. I think one of the regulars here has a sig line that says "Wise men learn from the mistakes of others." or something like that. How can one learn from mistakes which are hidden and kept secret. Secrecy means that more people will re-invent this wheel by trial and error; and in this case there are consequences for errors.

There are those individuals who will always find a way to hurt themselves, there is nothing you can do to stop them. It is not your responsibility to stop people from doing things that might be dangerous. It is your responsibility to properly warn people of the dangers.

Ethics are not always easy or clear-cut, and it is unfortunate that one's financial incentives are not always in alignment with the more socially responsible choice. Here is a commonly cited case study of (a lapse of) professional ethics (engineering ethics) which might help support my own thoughts on the matter: http://ethics.tamu.edu/ethics/tvtower/tv3.htm

There are also many reasons to leave this thread up that do not involve helping people boil acid. Journalists or accident investigators may find it useful. Laypeople attempting some task may be completely unaware of the danger. There are too many possible scenarios to list here.

Here are my suggestions, some of which have already been said.

• Watermark the page with a "Danger" background.
• Vet the posts for correctness
• Let people post their warnings.
• Let people post their setups (also let people comment on them)
• Post images (maybe allow them to be hidden) most people don't need to see them more than once, and it becomes bothersome.
• Post precautions and strategies to mitigate the danger.
• What is the first aid that should be applied to the person involved in an accident? Post that information.
• Do not discourage those who persist from asking questions.

I'm glad to see this thread is still alive.

PS I may edit this post later when I have time to fix the formatting

 

[butcher]

I was a tower man, I was on a crew who put up those radio, television, cable, and telephone, towers all over the united states, as a young man, we normally stacked 500 foot towers but we worked on all of them, the tallest I worked on was 1,800 footer. I have seen several tower accidents, survived a few. And know of other friends who live through some very close calls, and some good friend's who did not.

Four of my co-workers and good friends died falling to their death on them.

I fell 60 foot tied to a winch line and a 150 pound weight, with two FM radio antennas and a run of coax and other out rigging gear, (the 150 pound weight is to send the winch line back down), we had a sears strap (the strap with two clips, normally which clips to your belt and the strap goes around the tower legs while your working), well this strap to ride the line, we sit on the strap and clip it to the winch line, with the weight between our legs, the antenna’s and coax is also tied to this line. This was a spliced winch line I was riding up on, was rigged on the 500' tower with pulleys, the job was to hang the two FM antenna’s and coax on top of this 500 foot tower, and do some other repairs, on the way climbing back down, tying coax to the tower, the college kid (winch operator) who did the winch line splice from our winch line and to the line rigged on the tower, his splice came loose, I always wondered what good that college education done him he could not tie his own shoe's.

The 60-foot fall powdered both of my femurs (legs) broke my back and put many deep cuts into my hide, one cut my calf in half to bone, another deep cut across my shoulder. When I hit the rock hard ground, I bounced about four foot, stayed conscious, look over at the winch operator, who just sat there staring at me, he would not move, frozen, I started yelling and cussing at him, after what seemed like forever he finally came out of shock and ran over to me and asked what should he do, I told him he had a radio in the truck to call somebody, the ambulance was 90 mile away, it took them time to get there, and my body was swelling and getting stiffer, when they moved me, I thought that the pain would kill me, as I was wrapped in 1000' of 3/8'' aircraft cable that fell from tower on top of me and I had to be cut out of this cable before getting me on a back board and stretcher, to beat all the ambulance had a flat tire on the 90 mile trip back to the hospital, they drove about 20 mile's on just the rim bouncing (to get to the gas station for the attendant to change their tire, you would think they would know how to change a flat.), (heck if both my legs were not broke I would have showed them ambulance drivers how to change a tire so I wouldn’t have had to endure that bumpy ash ride.

When the kid running the winch, came and seen me in the hospital I asked him why he froze and just sat on the winch starring at me after I fell, and why he did not come to help, He said he knew I was dead, I said, I was yelling and cussing at you, couldn’t you hear me, and see me moving? He said he could hear and see me, but he knew I was dead. My guess is if he did not go into shock that I may have, I really do not know?

While in the hospital we also found out my wife was pregnant with my first daughter (good timing?), my baby is 33 years old now.

As far as the wet ashing or other dangerous proceedure goes I see both arguments, and really am not sure what is the best (but whatever the decision is. it should be what is best for the forum,all of its members, and those who will ever read what we write).

 

[hfywc]

nobody argue that this procedure is highly dangerous. but sam showed that this can be done in a safe manner. all we need is to create a super safe procedure that anyone can follow.

here's my two cents...
1. since home refiners don't have a titanium reactor, we can place the reactor inside a bigger glass container that will catch any spill in case of breakage. incidentally we can cover the reactor with another container small enough to fit inside the big container to contain the toxic gas being emitted. and this will be bubbled in a sodium carbonate solution.
2. let the acid cool down totally first before handling the solution.
3. make sure one has enough time to finish the process.
4. must have plenty of sodium carbonate at hand in case of spillage.
5. start in small quantities to gain experience.
6. face shield, long chemical resistant gloves, lab coat, etc.

looking forwad to seeing a finished forum approved procedure.

 

[Oz]

nobody argue that this procedure is highly dangerous. but sam showed that this can be done in a safe manner. all we need is to create a super safe procedure that anyone can follow.

That will never happen, it is an inherently dangerous procedure.

looking forwad to seeing a finished forum approved procedure.

Again it will not happen as there is no foolproof way to do this. One would be a fool to say otherwise.

Have I worked with hot concentrated sulfuric acid? Yes.

I knew the dangers and took the appropriate precautions knowing the risks. The “knowing the risks” part is why I “personally” have not deleted this thread as others need to know these risks.

Life is dangerous, you never get out of it alive. Everyone needs to decide for themselves what is an “acceptable” level of risk. In my opinion only, we need to be sure to explain the risks of procedures that are out there to those that may see them without the cautions we can explain here. That does not mean we are promoting or endorsing those procedures however. Frankly, reading all posts as I do, I would guess that less than 1% of our forum membership has the knowledge, and proper equipment to deal with this at an acceptable level of risk. Make no mistake, this can result in permanent disability or loss of life.

 

[threekgtvr4]

Hello everyone. This is my first post to this forum. I've been reading it for almost a week now (I have a bunch of electronic "crap" laying around) and read a lot.

I came across this thread while trying to figure out how to get the PM's out of the s"crap" and decided at once that I wouldn't be doing it. But I personally would rather see it stay on the forum as it tells that you really, REALLY shouldn't work with this process.

I think that it should also probably be a sticky. This would be for that someone that figures they might give it a try without truly knowing the consequences. They might get the same idea as sam and give it a whirl without fully knowing the consequences.

But I for one already knew that hot acid is bad. Even that cold acid is bad to "play" with. I'm still kind of apprehensive about trying any of the processes in this forum, just because of the acids involved. But I'm intelligent enough to know about ANY process, regardless of danger level, BEFORE I give it a shot. This way I don't have any questions. And any questions I have about any process should be answered BEFORE I even think about trying it.

Thanks to all the people that have shown how to do things, and how to do them properly. IF I ever give this a shot, at least I'll know the dangers, the steps and the safer ways to do the processes.

 

[Beirdo]

Just as a thought... Is there any possibility that this method could work (although MUCH slower) just by using concentrated sulfuric acid with no heating? Granted, it may take weeks rather than minutes/hours to process, but it sure would be safer by a large factor (although still potentially dangerous). Something like a very large beaker less than half-full of sulfuric acid with ICs in it, left under a fume hood, with periodic stirring (once a day or whatever) until the plastic has been consumed?

I for one am not thinking of ever using hot concentrated sulfuric acid. Way past my comfort level. Cold, I might waringly use it, but still, I'd be more comfortable with it a bit more dilute. Again, that would likely serve to further extend processing time, but if it's just sitting there working away while you are busy doing other things all that time, the delay may not be that big of an issue. After all, I made fruit wines that I couldn't even bottle for a year....

 

[Geo]

Just as a thought... Is there any possibility that this method could work (although MUCH slower) just by using concentrated sulfuric acid with no heating? Granted, it may take weeks rather than minutes/hours to process, but it sure would be safer by a large factor (although still potentially dangerous). Something like a very large beaker less than half-full of sulfuric acid with ICs in it, left under a fume hood, with periodic stirring (once a day or whatever) until the plastic has been consumed?

I for one am not thinking of ever using hot concentrated sulfuric acid. Way past my comfort level. Cold, I might waringly use it, but still, I'd be more comfortable with it a bit more dilute. Again, that would likely serve to further extend processing time, but if it's just sitting there working away while you are busy doing other things all that time, the delay may not be that big of an issue. After all, I made fruit wines that I couldn't even bottle for a year....

interesting question. i know concentrated sulfuric reacts to organics even when cool, just very slowly. the problem would be to keep moisture away from the acid while its processing. heating serves two purposes, first it speeds up the process, and second it keeps the solution hot enough to ward off moisture. if you cap the process, will it build pressure. can you cover the beaker with plastic wrap without the wrap being effected.

 

[kjt124]

Just for the sake of those trying to stress the safety issue on this process, I didn't actually see anyone describe what happens to 'tissue' affected by hot sulfuric acid or SO3 gas. In addition I have some experience with environmental chemistry and waste disposal so I will comment on that topic as well.

If you are going to use this method (which from a pure chemist's perspective sounds brilliant) it would be worth knowing the effects on living tissue (or any hydrocarbon for that matter). Sulfuric acid attacks the water in sugars, fats, various other hydrocarbons, leaving behind the carbon - hence the wonderfully simple carbonaceous slurry left from the wet ashing of your chips. What this means is THERE IS NO SAVING YOUR FLESH FROM A MISHAP. In addition, as stated before, the SO3 gas evolved during the entire process finds the water in your lungs, eyes, nose, etc. and dissolves to reform new sulfuric acid which then goes to work further on the hydrocarbons in the tissues as before. It is a vicious cycle that only ends once all of the acid is consumed or neutralized. In the case of your lungs - there is no possibility of neutralization.

Unless you are a well trained chemist with appropriate apparatus and you are well versed in regularly checking and maintaining your equipment, this procedure is not for you. You would actually be better off throwing your chips in the trash rather than risking any possibility of catastrophe using this method. There are not enough safeguards to make this an off the shelf method for the layman.

On another note, for those who are capable of pulling this method off correctly and safely and in a controlled enough atmosphere to whether the risks, here is a perspective from the environmental side...

Legally, the waste should be collected and disposed of to a properly permitted waste disposal facility equipped to handle acids and organics - suggestions would be The Environmental Quality Corp. in Detroit, MI, or Stablex for you Canadians - don't bother trying to move stuff across the border when it come to hazardous waste - it is an arduous task. On site waste treatment does require a permit in every state and province.

Now with that out of the way, for the hobbyists that simply want to be gentle on their local WWT plant and don't want to dump something down their drain that will give anyone a reason to come looking around...

There are only a few things that you want to control that will allow you to sequester this type of material to the local sewer (SEPTIC SYSTEMS ARE DIFFERENT - please don't follow this if you are on septic - you will kill all of your bugs and have a mess).

The first part if the carbonaceous slurry. This contains carbon (harmless), unreacted acid (corrosive), myriad other organic and nitrogenous compounds from the epoxies (usually harmless). If the only thing you wet ashed was the chips from boards and all you used is hot Sulfuric Acid, checking that the pH of the slurry is between 5 and 9 and adjusting accordingly with bicarbonate of soda accordingly is all that needs to be done to flush the slurry down the drain and rest easy with your plumbing and the local treatment plant. Additionally, the scrubber solution from your vapor recovery cell should only contain a weaker form of sulfuric acid from the action of the SO3 vapor on the water. pH neutralization on this will sufficiently reduce hazards to dump down the drain as well.

If you use other acids, oxidizers, flammables, etc. you may not simply assume that pH adjustment is an acceptable nor comprehensive treatment for hazard reduction.

I am sure most of us on this forum know this stuff, but again, I saw many people alluding to this information, but no one actually listing any of it. I hope this helps!

 

[Geo]

kjt124, thank you for pointing out the safety issues with this. the dangers of working with concentrated sulfuric acid has been discussed and pictures posted of examples of what could happen. alas, it was on another thread that was being posted on around the time this post started. perhaps one of the members that posted the pictures on Sam's post can put them here as well.kjt124, safety is stressed on the forum every time a process is recommended that has the potential to do serious harm.we certainly can use more members to help remind others that one slip or mistake can cause a life changing event.

 

[kjt124]

That is actually one of the main reasons I enjoy this forum. Huge volumes of valuable information is shared freely, but certainly not irresponsibly. My hats off to all of you. I feel honored to be a part of the community and will chime in any time I have information of use.

 

[nickvc]

The one thing most members of the forum never tire of reading is safety advice and ways to handle and to dispose of spent chemicals responsibly, anyone who posts such information is to be commended especially if they have expertise in the field, well done kjt124 8)

 

[Richard NL]

A bucket of sodium bicarbonate is recommended to have around, just in case.

Miss Calm Morrison Hoke wrote:
"Extensive tests indicated that the use of water, either in a large tank or from a running tap, was considerably better in treating acid burns than neutralization."
Page 321 in Refining Precious Metal Wastes
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2815953/Refin ... s-C-M-Hoke page 328.
Cut you be so nice to edited the first post one more time ?.
And include : Lots of (warm) water if possible either in a large tank or from a running tap nearby, on a safe distance from the reaction, just in case.

And the use of a chemical resistant apron, can come in handy.

Please correct me if I'm wrong or made a mistake,i am still learning.