Quartz Gold?

[user 72646]

Hi

I smelted some transistors in search of gold, maybe 50grams transistors in total.

I Cleaned the ash with hot water and some hcl, got all of the ash out and let powder dry after multiple rinses.

I then smelted the powder material.. Why? Just to create a crude alloy if possible, to store for future AR process.. and to get some smelting experience...

What I got back was a wonderful coal quartz like material with multiple colours and textures.

Some of these are magnified images

What has happened to the powder from the transistors ??

It now looks like coal and quartz...

I have a few grams of the quartz like material and was saving for a future AR process

I am hoping some gold is still in the material, although it is very interesting to study under a magnified glass..

Thanks

MM

 

[eaglekeeper]

I wouldn't expect very much gold from 50g of these. The copper heat sink makes up probably 90% of the weight.

 

[user 72646]

Eaglekeeper
When you say copper heat sink?
Could you point me to more information please?
MM

 

[Christian333]

Eaglekeeper
When you say copper heat sink?
Could you point me to more information please?
MM

First photo is a copper heat spreader/sink, removed from a T0-220 package style.

Second photo is a bridge diode, I see one in your incinerated material. There is no bond wire or precious metal potential.

Janie

 

[user 72646]

Hi Janie
I kept all of the Copper Spreaders, from the the ashing after separating the Ash away from powder.
So now I was going to process the powder with AR and Oxalic Acid at a later date to hopefully drop cleaner Gold powder. The items "spreaders" have a copper plating of some kind I believe.
So the gold is in the powder now right? Or on the edges of the spreaders?

Thanks in advance
MM

 

[Christian333]

Hi Janie
I kept all of the Copper Spreaders, from the the ashing after separating the Ash away from powder.
So now I was going to process the powder with AR and Oxalic Acid at a later date to hopefully drop cleaner Gold powder. The items "spreaders" have a copper plating of some kind I believe.
So the gold is in the powder now right? Or on the edges of the spreaders?

Thanks in advance
MM

The heat spreaders are solid copper, plated with several metals, nickel and tin are common, silver and gold rare.

The area where the microchip die is can also be plated with gold or silver and or have precious metal braze. See photo one where red dot is on gold braze and green dot on silver braze.

Bond wire weld residue can remain on the substrate, all bond wires are encased in the black epoxy. See photo two.

Janie

 

[Christian333]

MM, I will add this, the larger the transistor, the less likely it will have gold bond wires. Some of yours are probably aluminum. You can snip off one of the outer leads and remove the epoxy, it will have bond wire residue, gold is easy to see, microscope helps. Most transistors with three leads have two bond wires, attaching from leads to the micro chip.

Janie

 

[user 72646]

Noted.
And Thanks for the TIP.
Do you suggest dropping the powder again, or dissolving whatever I get from smelt in order to refine?

 

[Martijn]

Eaglekeeper
When you say copper heat sink?
Could you point me to more information please?
MM

A copper baseplate mostly used as the negative or common connection lead, where the semiconductor is brazed on to dissipate the heat away from the semiconductor, to prevent overheating. This plate shows on the back as bare metal, that can be mounted to a bigger heatsink.
Copper and aluminum are common heat spreaders because of good thermal conductivity.
As eaglekeeper said, the copper will be 90% of the weight, the epoxy casing will be the other 10% with a neglible 0.01% of gold bonding wires, if not aluminum.

 

[Christian333]

Noted.
And Thanks for the TIP.
Do you suggest dropping the powder again, or dissolving whatever I get from smelt in order to refine?

I'm not quite sure what you did to the material after incinerating the black epoxy. At this stage I crush and run through 100 mesh screen, then gravity separate bond wires from ash.

When you say "smelted", what did you do?

When you say "dropped the powder", what do you mean?

Janie

 

[user 72646]

Hi Janie

I have already moved on my question.

So after I incinerated not smelted the Black epoxy ( I incinerated the transistors and chips) I cleaned the charred material with water to remove Ash. I then added HCL & bleach to dissolve gold to solution. I then used aluminium cuttings. To drop out gold.

The remaining spreaders total 37grams so I assumed that would have around 2-3 grams of Gold in powder and from visual inspection I have around 2grams of brown-black gold powder from the Aluminium drop with some more powder still to be recovered from solution, maybe 0.5g.

The powder is still drying so I will attempt smelt at some point.

I did crush up all my Pd Ag MLCC's but have no formic acid so will store.

Are my gold estimations close? 2-3g of powder? Given the weight of spreader debris..

So now I am at the smelting point, this gold powder is still quite dark brown ( unsure if this unequivocally determines the quality of gold).
So I was going to smelt and then dissolve again (AR) to improve purity.. which interestingly brings me back to my First question

MM

 

[Golddigger76]

Maybe there's something that I don't see but since you have already have refined once with hydrochloric and bleach, then cemented It with aluminum I think that you shouldn't need to smelt your 2 grams, I would try to clean up possible base metals by simmering in hydrochloric acid to see if that will give you nice cinnamon colored powders, regardless wash powders thoroughly, then go straight to aqua regia and drop with SMB.

With the possibility of aluminum powders being present nitric acid boil will create aluminum oxide and just make a bigger mess.

I always refine gold powders twice before considering melting.

 

[kurtak]

I smelted some transistors in search of gold, maybe 50grams transistors in total.

I assumed that would have around 2-3 grams of Gold in powder

Per the bold print - not even close to 2-3 grams gold from 50 grams of those transistors - in fact not even close to that much gold from a pound of those transistors - you would be lucky to get 0.05 grams of gold from a pound of those (let alone from only 50 grams) & that is if they all have gold bond wire & no aluminum bond wires

Although some IC chips can have a gram or more per pound - most ICs have less than a gram per pound (from as little as 0.11 grams to around 0.6 grams per pound)

Take a look at this thread posted by Tzoax --------

https://goldrefiningforum.com/threa...ic-types-of-ic-chips-flatpacks-and-bga.22951/
Scroll down to the seventh post (page 1) which shows PROM type DIP chips (one of the lowest paying type chips) which pay "about" 0.11 gram per pound (or 0.245 gram per kilo)

Those PROM type chips have MANY more gold bond wires in them then the two bond wires found in the transistors you are processing

In other words - from a pound of PROM type chips - which has more bond wires (about 10 time more) then those transistors - you can expect "about" one tenth of a gram of gold - meaning from those transistors you can expect a few hundredths gram gold from a pound (a tenth of a gram divided by ten) if all the transistors have gold wires & not aluminum wires

I then added HCL & bleach to dissolve gold to solution. I then used aluminium cuttings. To drop out gold.

More then likely what you did was dissolve copper & then you cemented to copper out of solution with the aluminum - because there is absolutely no way you will get a couple grams of gold from 50 grams of those transistors - lucky to get even a few hundredths gram from 50 grams of transistors

Kurt

 

[kurtak]

I did crush up all my Pd Ag MLCC's but have no formic acid so will store.

You do NOT need formic acid to recover your Ag/Pd from MLCCs - there are MUCH better ways to do that

You need to stop watching youtube videos & start doing research here on the forum

Kurt

 

[user 72646]

Hi Kurt

I understand that after AR HCL will drop silver, then formic acid at 80degrees drops palladium?
If this is difficult...
Then where do I go ? ascorbic acid to drop palladium?

Let me know your thoughts

MM

 

[user 72646]

Per the bold print - not even close to 2-3 grams gold from 50 grams of those transistors - in fact not even close to that much gold from a pound of those transistors - you would be lucky to get 0.05 grams of gold from a pound of those (let alone from only 50 grams) & that is if they all have gold bond wire & no aluminum bond wires

Although some IC chips can have a gram or more per pound - most ICs have less than a gram per pound (from as little as 0.11 grams to around 0.6 grams per pound)

Take a look at this thread posted by Tzoax --------

https://goldrefiningforum.com/threa...ic-types-of-ic-chips-flatpacks-and-bga.22951/
Scroll down to the seventh post (page 1) which shows PROM type DIP chips (one of the lowest paying type chips) which pay "about" 0.11 gram per pound (or 0.245 gram per kilo)

Those PROM type chips have MANY more gold bond wires in them then the two bond wires found in the transistors you are processing

In other words - from a pound of PROM type chips - which has more bond wires (about 10 time more) then those transistors - you can expect "about" one tenth of a gram of gold - meaning from those transistors you can expect a few hundredths gram gold from a pound (a tenth of a gram divided by ten) if all the transistors have gold wires & not aluminum wires


More then likely what you did was dissolve copper & then you cemented to copper out of solution with the aluminum - because there is absolutely no way you will get a couple grams of gold from 50 grams of those transistors - lucky to get even a few hundredths gram from 50 grams of transistors

Kurt

Thanks Kurt....the numbers on the thread that you suggested are staggering.....i have no way near two grams..... And the idea that I have cemented out copper onto aluminum and not gold is starting to look true....yikes.....

 

[user 72646]

Thoughts?

 

[Yggdrasil]

Hi Kurt

I understand that after AR HCL will drop silver, then formic acid at 80degrees drops palladium?
If this is difficult...
Then where do I go ? ascorbic acid to drop palladium?

Let me know your thoughts

MM

My thoughts is that you have not studied enough, or have not understood what you studied.
Silver do not dissolve in AR.
Most refiners do not touch PGMs due to their long term toxicity.
So they cement it out on Copper as soon as they can.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Thanks Kurt....the numbers on the thread that you suggested are staggering.....i have no way near two grams..... And the idea that I have cemented out copper onto aluminum and not gold is starting to look true....yikes.....

You would have something around 0.025 grams if lucky.

 

[Shark]

When dealing with electronics it is very often best to go for the gold and/or silver and send the pgm’s to the stockpot for later recovery. By “later recovery” think in terms of value, like when there is enough to make the chase worthwhile. For a beginner it is to easy to get caught up in going for every penny of value even if it cost more than the recovered metal is worth. Learn one first, say gold, save the rest to your stockpot. If you clean out the stock pot, go for the gold and put the other values back in the new stockpot. I have a five gallon bucket that has almost ten years worth of these values in it, maybe one day I will give it a try. But, then I may just pass it to someone that knows more about it. It is nice to have more than one option.