Processing sim cards

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Exactly. Ygg is right. While foils look amazing they are just dirty foils and majority of gold on sim cards is indeed in bonding wires. I know it does not look like that but anyone who processed foils know that even if you try to dry them and weigh after proper processing them you wont get even close to that number.
AR was dirty dark green as expected as foils still contain a lot of copper and nickel. Maybe, if they would be left in AP longer or washed in hot nitric then they may get cleaner but that seems to be extra step which is not really requited as it is always easier to filter dissolved gold solution and wash gold powder.
I cant really say what I used as it was long time ago but that time I used mostly SMB so that would be most likely what I used to drop gold.
 
Thanks Patnor.
To solve the foils still sticking to the plastic base, I’m considering mild agitation using a paddle attached to a slow speed drill. Hoping they will collide more and knock themselves off. Any thoughts?
As for the simmering NaOH solution, I’m using 20%. From your experience, is this about right or too weak?
Lastly, I will incinerate the foils I get, after plastic removed, in order to recover bonding wires.
For 1,000 lbs of SIMs, seems worthwhile, but I will report back with my ultimate yields.
 
Liquidau said:
Thanks Patnor.
To solve the foils still sticking to the plastic base, I’m considering mild agitation using a paddle attached to a slow speed drill. Hoping they will collide more and knock themselves off. Any thoughts?
As for the simmering NaOH solution, I’m using 20%. From your experience, is this about right or too weak?
Lastly, I will incinerate the foils I get, after plastic removed, in order to recover bonding wires.
For 1,000 lbs of SIMs, seems worthwhile, but I will report back with my ultimate yields.
Click to expand...
Why not incineration of the whole sim card to start with ?
 
Liquidau said:
Yes, that’s an option. But I really dislike incineration, except when I need to like for chips. Burning 1,000 lbs of SIMs will generate a whole lot of bad fumes, even with pyrolysis and then incineration. And will take a lot of propane…
Click to expand...
It will not generate any appreciate amount of smoke or fumes if you pyrolize (with after burner) first as you always should.
You can actually use barbecue coals and forced air for this.

It is however good to remove as much plastic as possible first.
I would have used AP first for the foils, then NaOH to remove the chip section from the card.
No problem with hard agitation when the foils are gone.
Then pyrolize the chip section and go on from there like any other chips.
 

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