Processing old Ceramic CPU's

[localearner]

Hello, I wanted to ask whether I can use the following tutorial that I wrote to process a 1.6kg mixed Ceramic CPU batch.
Please tell me if I should change anything.

Tutorial:

Processing Lids:

Add one to one ratio of nitric acid (67%) to distilled water to all the CPU collected in a 250ml Beaker, 60ml to 60ml. Leave for 24-48 hours or until all gold foil comes off the lids. Stir occasionally.

After the hours pass, add water, filter the mixture out, add baking soda, and put it in a bucket. Filter the solids to place them to another beaker, use water bottle to remove all solids from filter. The cloth must be dense enough to filter all the organic dirty things.

In a 1l beaker, add 200ml hydrochloric acid (35%), 50ml nitric acid (67%) and leave the mixture for 3 hours. Add water to stop fuming. Filter the solids out to keep them out, spray with water bottle to remove all liquid from solids. Put liquid in a beaker, and add enough Urea-water so the mixture stops bubbling. Do NOT overadd Urea! Take 10g Sodium Metabisulfite, mix it with water, and add it to the Urea containing gold mixture. Leave for 16-24 hours.

Collect the gold, boil the gold sediment with concentrated hcl acid (35%), then in water, then wash all sediments 4-5 times with water. Add borax when melting.

Boil ready gold in diluted sulfuric acid (30%).

Wash with water.

Processing Ceramics
Add one to one ratio of nitric acid (67%) to distilled water to all the CPU collected in a 2l Beaker. Leave for 24-48 hours or until all gold separates from ceramics.

Filter the solution to a separate beaker, while using a magnetic stirrer, add 20ml hydrochloric acid (35%) to the filtered solution and leave it aside for the silver to precipitate.

After the hours pass, add water, filter the mixture out, add baking soda, and put it in a bucket. Filter the solids to place them to another beaker, use water bottle to remove all solids from filter. The cloth must be dense enough to filter all the organic dirty things. Add 400ml hydrochloric acid (35%), 80ml nitric acid (67%) and leave the mixture for 5 hours. Add water to stop fuming, filter the solids out to keep them out, spray with water bottle to remove all liquid from solids. Add enough Urea-water so the mixture stops bubbling. Do NOT overadd Urea! Take 30g Sodium Metabisulfite, mix it with water, and add it to the Urea containing gold mixture. Leave for 16h-24 hours.

Filter the silver out to another beaker and wash it multiple times, add water to the beaker and boil it until it bubbles then wait 5 minutes. Remove the excess water. Add sodium carbonate mixed with water and water to the beaker and boil it again for 1 hour. On low heat, add sugar and water then boil again. Wash it with water, and boil with water. Place in new water and leave for 1 day.

Collect the gold and the silver, boil the gold sediment with concentrated hcl acid (35%), then in distilled water, wash all sediments 4-5 times. Add borax when melting.
Boil ready gold in diluted sulfuric acid (30%).
Wash with water.

 

[eaglekeeper]

add enough Urea-water so the mixture stops bubbling. Do NOT overadd Urea!

I know we see it all over YouTube, but Urea doesn't work as you think it does. Sulfamic acid is recommended for neutralizing excess nitric acid. Here in the US we find it as a tile and grout cleaner at the local hardware store.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Hello, I wanted to ask whether I can use the following tutorial that I wrote to process a 1.6kg mixed Ceramic CPU batch.
Please tell me if I should change anything.

Tutorial:

Processing Lids:

Add one to one ratio of nitric acid (67%) to distilled water to all the CPU collected in a 250ml Beaker, 60ml to 60ml. Leave for 24-48 hours or until all gold foil comes off the lids. Stir occasionally.

After the hours pass, add water, filter the mixture out, add baking soda, and put it in a bucket. Filter the solids to place them to another beaker, use water bottle to remove all solids from filter. The cloth must be dense enough to filter all the organic dirty things.

In a 1l beaker, add 200ml hydrochloric acid (35%), 50ml nitric acid (67%) and leave the mixture for 3 hours. Add water to stop fuming. Filter the solids out to keep them out, spray with water bottle to remove all liquid from solids. Put liquid in a beaker, and add enough Urea-water so the mixture stops bubbling. Do NOT overadd Urea! Take 10g Sodium Metabisulfite, mix it with water, and add it to the Urea containing gold mixture. Leave for 16-24 hours.

Collect the gold, boil the gold sediment with concentrated hcl acid (35%), then in water, then wash all sediments 4-5 times with water. Add borax when melting.

Boil ready gold in diluted sulfuric acid (30%).

Wash with water.

Processing Ceramics
Add one to one ratio of nitric acid (67%) to distilled water to all the CPU collected in a 2l Beaker. Leave for 24-48 hours or until all gold separates from ceramics.

Filter the solution to a separate beaker, while using a magnetic stirrer, add 20ml hydrochloric acid (35%) to the filtered solution and leave it aside for the silver to precipitate.

After the hours pass, add water, filter the mixture out, add baking soda, and put it in a bucket. Filter the solids to place them to another beaker, use water bottle to remove all solids from filter. The cloth must be dense enough to filter all the organic dirty things. Add 400ml hydrochloric acid (35%), 80ml nitric acid (67%) and leave the mixture for 5 hours. Add water to stop fuming, filter the solids out to keep them out, spray with water bottle to remove all liquid from solids. Add enough Urea-water so the mixture stops bubbling. Do NOT overadd Urea! Take 30g Sodium Metabisulfite, mix it with water, and add it to the Urea containing gold mixture. Leave for 16h-24 hours.

Filter the silver out to another beaker and wash it multiple times, add water to the beaker and boil it until it bubbles then wait 5 minutes. Remove the excess water. Add sodium carbonate mixed with water and water to the beaker and boil it again for 1 hour. On low heat, add sugar and water then boil again. Wash it with water, and boil with water. Place in new water and leave for 1 day.

Collect the gold and the silver, boil the gold sediment with concentrated hcl acid (35%), then in distilled water, wash all sediments 4-5 times. Add borax when melting.
Boil ready gold in diluted sulfuric acid (30%).
Wash with water.

Welcome to us.
I have no time now so I'll address this later.

 

[kurtak]

Short answer -----------

The best way to process ceramic CPUs is to simply break them into larger chunks (smack them with a hammer to break them into 3 or 4 or 5 pieces)

Put ALL the pieces in your beaker - add HCl & nitric to make AR - put on hot plate & bring to a boil - boil in the AR until ALL metals are dissolved - filter the AR solution & drop your gold by your preferred method of precipitation

There is so little silver found in CPUs that it is not worth the trouble to chase it

Kurt

 

[localearner]

Short answer -----------

The best way to process ceramic CPUs is to simply break them into larger chunks (smack them with a hammer to break them into 3 or 4 or 5 pieces)

Put ALL the pieces in your beaker - add HCl & nitric to make AR - put on hot plate & bring to a boil - boil in the AR until ALL metals are dissolved - filter the AR solution & drop your gold by your preferred method of precipitation

There is so little silver found in CPUs that it is not worth the trouble to chase it

Kurt

Hello Kurt, thank you for your answer.

Wouldn’t the final gold be impure if I directly place the broke CPUs in AR?

I’ve seen many people put the broken CPUs in diluted nitric acid first to dissolve the base metals to make the gold more pure.

Also my estimation of the silver content is about 7 grams, which is not a lot but I could use the button to make jewelry.

 

[Proffshuggarn]

Hello Kurt, thank you for your answer.

Wouldn’t the final gold be impure if I directly place the broke CPUs in AR?

I’ve seen many people put the broken CPUs in diluted nitric acid first to dissolve the base metals to make the gold more pure.

Also my estimation of the silver content is about 7 grams, which is not a lot but I could use the button to make jewelry.

@localearner -As Kurt just wrote:

Short answer -----------

Thus a brief roughly summarized description of the process.
In my opinion, Kurt is one of (several) the most knowledgeable professionals here at GRF.
You will get answers to your questions, just have a little patience.
But you also need to study a lot on the subject yourself.

I don't have the links to this, but all the info is in the "library", as well as if you use the fantastic search function on this page.
In all fairness, I advise you to pause for now and leave what you are doing in a safe place until you have some more information and advice from the pros before continuing.
That way you don't have to stand there with a lot of acid mixtures and scratch your head. In every good way.
/Dennis

 

[kurtak]

Wouldn’t the final gold be impure if I directly place the broke CPUs in AR?

Again - short answer - no

There is no reason you can't get near pure gold (995) &/or even pure gold (999) with the (short answer) process I posted in my first post

I have processed MANY pounds/kilos of ceramic CPUs &/or ceramic IC chips over my 10 (plus) years doing this for a living with going direct to AR

I see you are a new member so a word of warning - be careful what you see/hear on youtube - Though there are "some good youtube videos out there (VERY few) most of them are FULL of mis-information bad information incomplete information & even down right wrong information

MANY of them are done by back yard hacks wont to be refiners that have no real knowledge &/or real experience with real refining

So just be careful getting (real) advice from youtube

Kurt

 

[adam mizer]

If you are not happy with your first drop, method as Kurt stated.
Process the gold sponge again.
Its much easier to digest the sponge.
You could use hcl and bleach or peroxide add a couple-few mil of sulfuric to check for a light cloud of lead possibly and then drop again.
Washing in hot water is supposed to get any residual lead out if sulfuric not available.
You can wash filter and boil in hcl for 10 minutes. (I like this). Then rinse again several times.
You may even notice the powder getting lighter in color after hcl boil. Very clean like.

Without these added steps when I sold my gold the buyer xrf tested and the gold was always around 99% made me wonder that maybe the on his remelt his crucible dish wash dirty?

 

[localearner]

Again - short answer - no

There is no reason you can't get near pure gold (995) &/or even pure gold (999) with the (short answer) process I posted in my first post

I have processed MANY pounds/kilos of ceramic CPUs &/or ceramic IC chips over my 10 (plus) years doing this for a living with going direct to AR

I see you are a new member so a word of warning - be careful what you see/hear on youtube - Though there are "some good youtube videos out there (VERY few) most of them are FULL of mis-information bad information incomplete information & even down right wrong information

MANY of them are done by back yard hacks wont to be refiners that have no real knowledge &/or real experience with real refining

So just be careful getting (real) advice from youtube

Kurt

Thank you so much for your advice.

I will try your method to see if I get near pure gold or even pure gold.

The CPU batch I'm going to be processing consists of the following:

5 AM386
1 AM486
1 regular pentium no gold cap
6 x Pentium Gold Cap
(11) x Mix of iBM 6x86s and Cyrix 686s
Broken CPU Mix (Amounts to 2 full non gold capped CPUs)
1 x WinChip
‘Processed’ DX4
Intel DX2 x 2
14 x Smaller CPU’s Mixed (AMD and Intel)
1 x CX486
1 x Batch of Mixed Coprocessors (123g)
1 x Alpha DEC
11 x Plain Gold Lidded (Motorola) Cpu Batch
2 x DLP Processors
Total = 1650g of Ceramics, and 62g of Gold Lids that I've separated from the CPUs.

My estimation is about 8.2-9 grams of at least 95% gold, but I would really love a second opinion by a much more experienced refiner.

Could I still follow your method with these CPUs?

Also, I wrote the tutorial above using OwlTech and Trinity Gold's videos. Please tell me if they are reliable, as I have gotten my gold yield estimation through their yields.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Thank you so much for your advice.

I will try your method to see if I get near pure gold or even pure gold.

The CPU batch I'm going to be processing consists of the following:

5 AM386
1 AM486
1 regular pentium no gold cap
6 x Pentium Gold Cap
(11) x Mix of iBM 6x86s and Cyrix 686s
Broken CPU Mix (Amounts to 2 full non gold capped CPUs)
1 x WinChip
‘Processed’ DX4
Intel DX2 x 2
14 x Smaller CPU’s Mixed (AMD and Intel)
1 x CX486
1 x Batch of Mixed Coprocessors (123g)
1 x Alpha DEC
11 x Plain Gold Lidded (Motorola) Cpu Batch
2 x DLP Processors
Total = 1650g of Ceramics, and 62g of Gold Lids that I've separated from the CPUs.

My estimation is about 8.2-9 grams of at least 95% gold, but I would really love a second opinion by a much more experienced refiner.

Could I still follow your method with these CPUs?

Also, I wrote the tutorial above using OwlTech and Trinity Gold's videos. Please tell me if they are reliable, as I have gotten my gold yield estimation through their yields.

Owltech are, Trinity I do not know.
I think it varies.

 

[Shark]

Owltech is good. Trinity not so much.

 

[Proffshuggarn]

Thank you so much for your advice.

I will try your method to see if I get near pure gold or even pure gold.

The CPU batch I'm going to be processing consists of the following:

5 AM386
1 AM486
1 regular pentium no gold cap
6 x Pentium Gold Cap
(11) x Mix of iBM 6x86s and Cyrix 686s
Broken CPU Mix (Amounts to 2 full non gold capped CPUs)
1 x WinChip
‘Processed’ DX4
Intel DX2 x 2
14 x Smaller CPU’s Mixed (AMD and Intel)
1 x CX486
1 x Batch of Mixed Coprocessors (123g)
1 x Alpha DEC
11 x Plain Gold Lidded (Motorola) Cpu Batch
2 x DLP Processors
Total = 1650g of Ceramics, and 62g of Gold Lids that I've separated from the CPUs.

My estimation is about 8.2-9 grams of at least 95% gold, but I would really love a second opinion by a much more experienced refiner.

Could I still follow your method with these CPUs?

Also, I wrote the tutorial above using OwlTech and Trinity Gold's videos. Please tell me if they are reliable, as I have gotten my gold yield estimation through their yields.

Looks nice
If the lids on picture 2 are aluminum they can easily be stripped in diluted nitric, works for me anyway

 

[localearner]

Looks nice
If the lids on picture 2 are aluminum they can easily be stripped in diluted nitric, works for me anyway

The lids are aluminum, so I'll process the lids via separating the gold strips with diluted nitric acid first, and processing the ceramics with putting them directly in AR. Thank you.

 

[Owltech]

The lids are aluminum, so I'll process the lids via separating the gold strips with diluted nitric acid first, and processing the ceramics with putting them directly in AR. Thank you.

This is the first time I'm hearing of aluminum ceramic CPU lids... The ones I process are always kovar based. I even have a post about them here on GRF about the lid's weight and cpu's gold content correlation: https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/help-with-heavy-gold-top-cpus.26507/post-283192

Anyway, it is easy to check with a magnet, if the lid is attracted to the magnet you can rule out aluminum, obviously.

 

[Owltech]

Thank you so much for your advice.

I will try your method to see if I get near pure gold or even pure gold.

The CPU batch I'm going to be processing consists of the following:

5 AM386
1 AM486
1 regular pentium no gold cap
6 x Pentium Gold Cap
(11) x Mix of iBM 6x86s and Cyrix 686s
Broken CPU Mix (Amounts to 2 full non gold capped CPUs)
1 x WinChip
‘Processed’ DX4
Intel DX2 x 2
14 x Smaller CPU’s Mixed (AMD and Intel)
1 x CX486
1 x Batch of Mixed Coprocessors (123g)
1 x Alpha DEC
11 x Plain Gold Lidded (Motorola) Cpu Batch
2 x DLP Processors
Total = 1650g of Ceramics, and 62g of Gold Lids that I've separated from the CPUs.

My estimation is about 8.2-9 grams of at least 95% gold, but I would really love a second opinion by a much more experienced refiner.

Could I still follow your method with these CPUs?

Also, I wrote the tutorial above using OwlTech and Trinity Gold's videos. Please tell me if they are reliable, as I have gotten my gold yield estimation through their yields.

2.9g Au - my projection on your 62g lids gold yield

 

[localearner]

This is the first time I'm hearing of aluminum ceramic CPU lids... The ones I process are always kovar based. I even have a post about them here on GRF about the lid's weight and cpu's gold content correlation: https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/help-with-heavy-gold-top-cpus.26507/post-283192

Anyway, it is easy to check with a magnet, if the lid is attracted to the magnet you can rule out aluminum, obviously.

You are right, they are definitely not aluminum, it's my fault and I should've checked beforehand.

2.9g just from the lids sounds very good!

Can I process my mixed batch of CPU's following your AMD processing tutorials on YouTube exactly as you show it even if my batch contains a mix of IBMs, Cyrixs, Intels, Motorolas, Winchips, Coprocessors and AMDs?

 

[Owltech]

Yes, you can use the procedure from this video:

 

[anachronism]

This is the first time I'm hearing of aluminum ceramic CPU lids... The ones I process are always kovar based. I even have a post about them here on GRF about the lid's weight and cpu's gold content correlation: https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/help-with-heavy-gold-top-cpus.26507/post-283192

Anyway, it is easy to check with a magnet, if the lid is attracted to the magnet you can rule out aluminum, obviously.

The AMD K6 range are Aluminium lids. Then again they aren't true cored ceramics, they are FCBGA