Ram Card BGA Processing

[ssmontecarlo]

1. I removed 479.6 grams of ram card bga chips. I removed the stickers, then placed chips in a 2000ml beaker. Covered with HCL, placed on my Coleman stove. Brought to a light boil. Stirred a few times until all solder was removed from chips. Poured chips and HCL through a plastic collinder that I placed on top of a 2.5 gallon plastic bucket. Immediately poured acid/ solder into a empty HCL plastic jug. I used a large funnel to pour the acid/ solder through. Made it easier. No spilling of acid/ solder onto the ground. Then washed the chips with tap water a few times.
After chips dried, I re-weighed chips. Weight was 441.4 grams....lost little over an ounce. Placed chips into a large stainless steel pot I got. It's actually a schedule 40 ss pipe. Twelve inches in diameter. With another piece of stainless steel plate for the bottom.
My cap or lid for it is an cast iron pot I used once before incineration chips. Placed the ss pot on propane fired burner, placed the cap/ lid on, began to pyrolize/incinerate the chips. Once chips are all white removed from heat and let them cool.

After reading several post. And of course watching some videos. I came up with my steps to process the chips. Feel free to give advice on these steps.

2. I will remove chips from the stainless steel pot. Place them in a small food processor. Blend/ chop up chips.

3. Pour the material from the blender. Into a large glass pyrex dish. Spread material out to the thickness of 1/8 of an inch. Thinner is even better. I have 2 neodymium magnets in a plastic sandwich bag. Slowly, just above the material, run these two magnets over the blended chips. To remove any ferrous metals.

4. I placed a 120 mesh, stainless steel screen, into another small plastic collinder. Formed it to the inside shape of the collinder and its held in place with some alligator clips. Pour ash into collinder/ screen, then sift. What chips are not small enough will be dumped into a separate pyrex dish. For further processing.

5. Pour the sifted ash into a 2000ml beaker, add some distilled water, few drops of jet dry. Stir/ swirl the ash until it's no longer floating.

6. Rinse off any ash I can. Pouring the mixture into another 2000ml beaker. Save this for further processing.

7. Take the beaker with gold bond wires, ash, and if it contains any other metals, add HCL until it cover the ash. Heat to remove any base metals...ferrous and/or non- ferrous metals.

8. Rinse with distilled water into a plastic 2.5 gallon bucket.

9. Begin process of dissolving gold bond wires by means of using Pour man's nitric acid and HCL.

10. Vacuum filter solution through a 5 micron filter.

11. Pour solution into a beaker. Add a pinch of sulfamic acid. If no reaction, then proceed to adding stump out to drop the gold. Remember to much stump out will cause the gold to precipitate out very fine. The correct amount will produce a larger/ lumps of precipitated gold.

12. Let solution settle, then Vacuum filter through a 5 micron filter.

This is the steps I plan on using. I did a small trial run a few days ago. Used 304 grams of chips. My return so far has been .5 of a gram of gold.

Again any comments, advice, please feel free to comment. A big shout out to Shark and Kurtak. THANK YOU.

 

[eaglekeeper]

7. Take the beaker with gold bond wires, ash, and if it contains any other metals, add HCL until it cover the ash. Heat to remove any base metals...ferrous and/or non- ferrous metals.

Since you have already removed the Tin solder you could use nitric at this point (much faster then Hcl) to remove the base metals. If I remember correctly, Cu should be the only base metals inside these BGA chips.

12. Let solution settle, then Vacuum filter through a 5 micron filter.

Now that you have recovered the gold, do you plan on refining the gold powder?

 

[Yggdrasil]

1. I removed 479.6 grams of ram card bga chips. I removed the stickers, then placed chips in a 2000ml beaker. Covered with HCL, placed on my Coleman stove. Brought to a light boil. Stirred a few times until all solder was removed from chips. Poured chips and HCL through a plastic collinder that I placed on top of a 2.5 gallon plastic bucket. Immediately poured acid/ solder into a empty HCL plastic jug. I used a large funnel to pour the acid/ solder through. Made it easier. No spilling of acid/ solder onto the ground. Then washed the chips with tap water a few times.
After chips dried, I re-weighed chips. Weight was 441.4 grams....lost little over an ounce. Placed chips into a large stainless steel pot I got. It's actually a schedule 40 ss pipe. Twelve inches in diameter. With another piece of stainless steel plate for the bottom.
My cap or lid for it is an cast iron pot I used once before incineration chips. Placed the ss pot on propane fired burner, placed the cap/ lid on, began to pyrolize/incinerate the chips. Once chips are all white removed from heat and let them cool.

After reading several post. And of course watching some videos. I came up with my steps to process the chips. Feel free to give advice on these steps.

2. I will remove chips from the stainless steel pot. Place them in a small food processor. Blend/ chop up chips.

3. Pour the material from the blender. Into a large glass pyrex dish. Spread material out to the thickness of 1/8 of an inch. Thinner is even better. I have 2 neodymium magnets in a plastic sandwich bag. Slowly, just above the material, run these two magnets over the blended chips. To remove any ferrous metals.

4. I placed a 120 mesh, stainless steel screen, into another small plastic collinder. Formed it to the inside shape of the collinder and its held in place with some alligator clips. Pour ash into collinder/ screen, then sift. What chips are not small enough will be dumped into a separate pyrex dish. For further processing.

5. Pour the sifted ash into a 2000ml beaker, add some distilled water, few drops of jet dry. Stir/ swirl the ash until it's no longer floating.

6. Rinse off any ash I can. Pouring the mixture into another 2000ml beaker. Save this for further processing.

7. Take the beaker with gold bond wires, ash, and if it contains any other metals, add HCL until it cover the ash. Heat to remove any base metals...ferrous and/or non- ferrous metals.

8. Rinse with distilled water into a plastic 2.5 gallon bucket.

9. Begin process of dissolving gold bond wires by means of using Pour man's nitric acid and HCL.

10. Vacuum filter solution through a 5 micron filter.

11. Pour solution into a beaker. Add a pinch of sulfamic acid. If no reaction, then proceed to adding stump out to drop the gold. Remember to much stump out will cause the gold to precipitate out very fine. The correct amount will produce a larger/ lumps of precipitated gold.

12. Let solution settle, then Vacuum filter through a 5 micron filter.

This is the steps I plan on using. I did a small trial run a few days ago. Used 304 grams of chips. My return so far has been .5 of a gram of gold.

Again any comments, advice, please feel free to comment. A big shout out to Shark and Kurtak. THANK YOU.

To accompany Eaglekeeper.
Dilute solution will make a fine precipitate concentrated will be much denser.
If Silver is expected to be there, it will need to be cold and dilute to get out as much AgCl as possible.
I have not heard about too much SMB causing issues with precipitation, it will however create problems with Stannous testing.
Most will not filter the precipitate but just let it settle and siphon off the liquid.
If the precipitate has issues with slow settling add a bit of Sulfuric acid and let it simmer boils for a while, this will let it agglomerate and settle well.

 

[ssmontecarlo]

Since you have already removed the Tin solder you could use nitric at this point (much faster then Hcl) to remove the base metals. If I remember correctly, Cu should be the only base metals inside these BGA chips.



Now that you have recovered the gold, do you plan on refining the gold powder?

The only refining I do of the gold powder is to heat the powder, to almost boiling, in HCL. Rinse with distilled water. Repeat the process until the Hcl is clear. This is the only method I know.

 

[Yggdrasil]

The only refining I do of the gold powder is to heat the powder, to almost boiling, in HCL. Rinse with distilled water. Repeat the process until the Hcl is clear. This is the only method I know.

That is allrigh, but it is considered recovering not refining if you do not do anything to the Gold itself.
And since you are dissolving it and precipitating it is refining.

But it can often benefit from a second refining.
Almost no contaminants will ensure very pure Gold.

 

[Shark]

The magnet inside a plastic bag will work...but put the bagged magnet inside another bag and use it to pull the metals from the magnet. This way you don't have to fight the metal and the single plastic bag.

 

[Alondro]

Are they RAM card chips or BGAs? Those are totally different. A pound of BGAs should yield MUCH more than 0.5g. RAM chips should also generally give more than that, but only about a gram or two depending on the predominant brands of chips in the pile.

 

[ssmontecarlo]

That is allrigh, but it is considered recovering not refining if you do not do anything to the Gold itself.
And since you are dissolving it and precipitating it is refining.

But it can often benefit from a second refining.
Almost no contaminants will ensure very pure Gold.

In the past, I've filtered my gold using vacuum pump. Catching the gold in 5 micron paper filters. Placing the filters into a beaker. I'd add distilled water, bring to a light boil. Pour the water into a smaller beaker. Repeat this process as needed. Then cover filter with gold with HCL bring to a light boil. Repeat this process as needed.