Processing IC powder

[hex1]

I have incinerated a few pounds of flat packs and crushed them into fine powder. ran with a magnet to remove iron and sifted out the large chunks.
I tried to pan out the values but see a few problems with that process.
One, it is time consuming, Two, it requires skill , most important i believe a lot of the microscopic gold wires that got run thru my pipe based chip smasher are now a super fine powder and are impossible to see with the naked eye, a lot of gold will be thrown out with the wash water.
What would be the best way to extract the gold without panning. Should I process them like catalytic beads a few AR soaks and rinses then try and fix the mess of mixed metals. should i do hot HCL boil 1st before the AR? Would a HCL/CL leach be more selective and dissolve only the gold? I would imagine the expert chemists here would use cyanide but that is way to scary for me to even think about. I think I read about smelting but i don't have a furnace. Any suggestions as to the best way to approach this would be appreciated.

 

[steyr223]

Not sure
but, couldn't you put in a/p or nitric to kill of any
Base metals,then filter 2 or 3 times and then go
To hcl/ bleach which when filtered would separate
All the non metal pieces or,
Could you just go straight to hcl/bleach

Hope this helps get other advise I believe I
am missing something like incineration or a hot
Nitric wash.
Steyr223 rob

 

[jeneje]

Don't know if this will help you, but first i would boil the material in water (use a watch glass), decant and then boil in HCL(use a watch glass), decant and use a mild HNO3 solution to remove base matels. Then process using your favorite method.

This may help you
Ken

 

[patnor1011]

Blue bowl.
or
Rugged plastic pipe cut in half lengthwise, mounted-glued on piece of wood. Say about 2 meters long. Use it like mini sluice, very slow stream of water will carry dirt away.

 

[Auful]

Blue bowl.
or
Rugged plastic pipe cut in half lengthwise, mounted-glued on piece of wood. Say about 2 meters long. Use it like mini sluice, very slow stream of water will carry dirt away.

It's called a "Henry Henry" sluice I think. Here's a picture of a homemade one I found online

 

[rewalston]

Blue bowl.
or
Rugged plastic pipe cut in half lengthwise, mounted-glued on piece of wood. Say about 2 meters long. Use it like mini sluice, very slow stream of water will carry dirt away.

It's called a "Henry Henry" sluice I think. Here's a picture of a homemade one I found online

Years ago I was a member of the GPAA and the President (I guess you could call him that) named Buzzard used to call it a poop-tube. So that's what I've always called it and it's been 20 years or so.

Rusty

 

[hex1]

Thanks for the replies.Here is what i did. I used a 20"tall straight walled glass flower vase, placed it into a bucket, placed about a cup of the ash in the vase, placed a waterhose with a slight trickle flowing into the vase then gave the powder a gentle stir. I let the water overflow until the water in the vase was clear leaving the heavier sediment in the vase and the fine silt in the bucket. The sediment is currently soaking in dilute nitric.I will change the acid a couple of times then dry and incinerate to get rid of any possible metastannic acid then use hcl /bleach to dissolve the gold.

 

[patnor1011]

There will be small amount of silver in your waste nitric.

 

[eeTHr]

hex1---

Very small particles of gold will tend to float, especially if there is even a tiny amount of oil (like from your fingertips) in the water.

Adding a surfactant will eliminate this tendency. A few drops of dishwasher rinse additive should work, or detergent but it will foam some. You would need to experiment for the optimum amount. A closed system, recirculating the water, would keep the surfactant in there rather than loosing it down the drain, although you would probably need to add a little more from time to time, depending on how long you used it.

 

[kjavanb123]

I have built a small Henry-Henry sluice, and results were good for powdered IC sifted.



Runnig,


From the side,


Finally the concentrate


Regards
Kj

 

[joubjonn]

I'm doing the exact same thing today. 500 grams of IC's. I bought a pan off eBay and all I do is throw the hot chips in water, stir it and dump the water in the pan. iv found that the gold wires pretty much always sink to the very bottom of the 5 gallon bucket. I rarely see any gold in the pan when doing it like this. look for patnor's posts on this and send him $5 for his PDF. he sends it within a few hours. I did my north bridge / bga chips like this I'm pretty sure I got most of the gold. dissolved mine in HCl/bleach. takes a little longer then AR but it works.

here is a list of my steps for the IC's

1. incinerate with staineless shallow pan, I put a cookie sheet on top with a rock, almost no smoke
2. dump in water with strainer
3. re-incinerate after washing carbon out
4. get iron with magnet
5. wash carbon out with 5 gallon bucket and pan (almost all the gold will concentrate in the bottom)
6. 30% nitric with heat
7. wash with water and re-incinerate
8. wash with water
9. dissolve gold

 

[joubjonn]

also, I use my crawfish boiler as the incinerator same as a turkey fryer

 

[Marcel]

I have processed around 1Kg ICs lately:

- Incinerated material
- removed large pieces manually
- removed iron/nickel with magnet
- soaked material in dilute sulphuric acid to remove/dissolve lead ( appearently it also removed a lot of tin). Let it soak in for 1 week.
- washed with hot water several times
- soaked remaining material in dilute HNO3 for 1 week
- Decanted the solution and added it to the stockpot (silver should be removed, maybe some Pd)
- washed material with hot water several times (to remove salts)
- soaked in HCl and added a few ml of HNO3 53% plus H2O2 (to speed up and reduce NOx)
- tested with SC: Positive for Gold, but the solution had a green stich, I expect Pd as well.
- Decanted solution. Added copper wires.
- Let the precipitation work for 5 days.

Now my status: I have a greyish powder in the jar, which I assume is Pd, maybe some Au as well.
Next I will decant the solution (but keep it!!!), wash the powder and see what it is made of. Then dissolve it in Aqua Regia etc.
From what I have learned here and what has been confirmed by experiments is that the most noble metal will precipitate first. So I expect the Pd in the first batch and the majority of Au when I precipitate the remaining solution.
I chose not to use SMB since it is not a precipitant for Pd and I have had a lot of trouble in the past, getting all the PMs out if I use SMB and then copper for the remains to get out the Pd.
Also adding H2O2 instead of using too much or to strong HNO3 has been a great way for me to ease recovery and reduce any precipitation problems.

PS: I love the simplistic gold washing sluice that has been shown here. Will try to make one by myself next week.

 

[kjavanb123]

All,

After running few hundred grams of seived ashe through this henry sluice, the aquraim pump died due to the ashes got into it, so I had to halt before processing the rest of the ashes.
So the final concentrate first digested in dilute nitric for 24 hrs, siphoned off the blue solution dropped few ml of hcl and almost in few seconds I got the white cloud which settled I believe that is the silver.
Have not tested for Pd in solution yet. But after some rinses the left over of concentrate was digested in hcl and will test fo Au tommorow.
I got another aquarium water pump with this filter attach to it so hopefully this will dissolve the problem with pump dying. Also thinking to lower the flow speed of water and play with angel tommorow.

Regards
Kj

 

[Justincase]

Would not a separation table do a better job of micro particles.
I have been looking at this one as one hoping as in the field of dreams if you build it the material will come.eBay item number:161237730178
The unit is not to expensive but if any one had plan's for an effective alternative I would be interested to see.

 

[bmgold2]

All,

After running few hundred grams of seived ashe through this henry sluice, the aquraim pump died due to the ashes got into it, so I had to halt before processing the rest of the ashes.
So the final concentrate first digested in dilute nitric for 24 hrs, siphoned off the blue solution dropped few ml of hcl and almost in few seconds I got the white cloud which settled I believe that is the silver.
Have not tested for Pd in solution yet. But after some rinses the left over of concentrate was digested in hcl and will test fo Au tommorow.
I got another aquarium water pump with this filter attach to it so hopefully this will dissolve the problem with pump dying. Also thinking to lower the flow speed of water and play with angel tommorow.

Regards
Kj

You could try using a bucket in a larger tub to try to catch the ashes before they make it back to the pump. Search Google for recirculating sluice and see what others are doing.

Here's just one site with an idea but there are lots of other ways to do it.

http://www.nuggetshooter.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=23481

Picture from that link:

I prospected in the Arizona desert before where you had to carry all of your water and had to recirculate your water. I got to see lots of people's ways to handle the muddy water. Most of them involved at least a couple containers to give the water a chance to clear up a little before it got back to the pump.

 

[patnor1011]

Put strainer with cloth where muddy water goes back to your bucket it will work like filter to catch bigger particles from going to pump.

 

[resabed01]

All,

After running few hundred grams of seived ashe through this henry sluice, the aquraim pump died due to the ashes got into it, so I had to halt before processing the rest of the ashes.
Regards
Kj

Your pump probably died because you might have ferrous metals still in the mix. They got attracted to the magnets in the pump and clogged it.
Take the pump apart and clean it, you'll see what I mean.

 

[patnor1011]

20$ ebay.