Real recovery figures from 1 Ton of electronic scrap.

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K

kdbarker

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 13, 2008
Messages
67
Location
UPSTATE NY
Here are some real figures from a lot weighing close to 1 ton (1900lbs) of mixed computer boards that I had refined at Specialty Metals Smelters & Refiners, LLC in Fairfield, CT in November of 2007.

The lot consisted of mixed PCBs from Pentium 1s,2s and 3s, and some older apple computers including motherboards, PCI cards, ram modules and PCBs from several hundred hard drives and the like.
Only bulk steel was removed from the cards. Contact fingers, pins, flatpacks, etc. were left intact. Ceramic CPUs were removed and sold outright.

The skinny...

Scrap received by refinery - 1909.67 Pounds Net Weight

Entire Lot (Gross) 27842.989 Tr. Ozs.

Gold Quanity (Net) 5.410 Tr. Ozs. 98.00% payable

Silver Quantity (Net) 84.361 Tr. Ozs. 98.00% payable

Palladium Quanity (Net) 3.241 Tr. Ozs. 97.00% payable

Lot Charge $350.00
Treatment Charge $1.00 per pound $1,909.67
Pickup charge $216.69
Total refining fees ($2,476.36) (This is the total amount charged against the settlement check that I received).

Please note: Specialty Metals has since raised the minimum lot requirement to 5,000lbs for electronic scrap.
 
kdbarker said:
Here are some real figures from a lot weighing close to 1 ton (1900lbs) of mixed computer boards that I had refined at Specialty Metals Smelters & Refiners, LLC in Fairfield, CT in November of 2007.

The lot consisted of mixed PCBs from Pentium 1s,2s and 3s, and some older apple computers including motherboards, PCI cards and the like. Only bulk steel was removed from the cards. Contact fingers, pins, flatpacks, etc. were left intact. Ceramic CPUs were removed and sold outright.

The skinny...

Scrap received by refinery - 1909.67 Pounds Net Weight

Entire Lot (Gross) 27842.989 Tr. Ozs.

Gold Quanity (Net) 5.410 Tr. Ozs. 98.00% payable

Silver Quantity (Net) 84.361 Tr. Ozs. 98.00% payable

Palladium Quanity (Net) 3.241 Tr. Ozs. 97.00% payable

Lot Charge $350.00
Treatment Charge $1.00 per pound $1,909.67
Pickup charge $216.69
Total refining fees ($2,476.36) (This is the total amount charged against the settlement check that I received).

Please note: Specialty Metals has since raised the minimum lot requirement to 5,000lbs for electronic scrap.
Click to expand...

If you don't mind me asking, how much did you make on the 1900lbs of scrap? Was it worth your time and energy to collect it all?

thanks!
Mike B
 
I left that part out...simply because I figured that anyone could take historical price data of the noted PMs recovered from the lot and do the math.

This data is what the refinery will send you after the lot is processed. You then call the refinery when you want to “lock in” that days PM price.

"Is it worth it?"...you will have to answer that one for youself. Just remember that it takes tens of thousands of pounds of computers to make 1000 pounds of PCBs let alone 5000 pounds that this refinery now requires for a minimum size lot.
 
I understand the gold content and am not surprised at that amount recovered but the 84 oz of silver I am puzzled about.
That would seem to be a lot of silver in that particular lot. I wonder where all the silver came from? Any ideas?
Steve of the North
 
The silver content is consistent with previous lots that Specialty Metals has processed for me.

You wrote “I wonder where all the silver came from? Any ideas?”

I would say…Contacts and solder mostly…but I can’t pinpoint any one item.
 
One more thing I want to clarify…I’m not by any means advertising for Specialty Metals.

I’ve been a lurker on this forum for a long time…gaining knowledge and putting it to practical use in a hobby that I love.

For this I can’t thank everyone enough.

At this time I felt I should contribute something to the forum, so I thought some real recovery data (or as real as reported by the refinery) may be useful to some members in the northeast looking for a refinery of electronic scrap.

Also, this recovery data is from untouched PCBs. The gold fingers and contacts were not removed.

If someone were to remove these items from the boards to process themselves while staging the leftover PCBs for further processing, one could use the figures above to estimate the value of the lot after deducting the values recovered by you.

Cool facts…it takes about 30 (thirty) 55gal drums to hold approximately 5000lbs of PCBs.
Just my own observation…
 
NHF,

The term PCB refers to two things depending on the context.

The most common usage is Printed Circuit Boards. Any circuit board with components and/or traces on it.

The second usage is related to Poly Chlorinated Biphenyls which are hazardous chlorinated hydrocarbons used in larger transformers and capacitors. You can check wiki for more info.

Steve
 
wow, 30 drums worth... yikes! I currently have 2 drums that I'm bringing in today, no PCBs just copper wire. But there's prolly 200 or so pounds of copper wire in there.

Thank you for your breakdown too! it's good to know the averages, at today's gold price, that certainly is worth it if you can get your scrap for nothing. Which I think most of us do :)

Mike B
 
Rag and Bone said:
The silver content strikes me as incredibly high. Doesn't this outfit pay on copper?
Click to expand...
I agree. I would have very serious questions about the exceedingly high volume of silver were that my shipment.

One of my customers used a major East coast refiner for his polishing wastes and was totally screwed. They reported a high percentage of silver and a totally unreasonably low amount of gold in his material. Considering he was not a silversmith and worked strictly with gold, it made no sense.

Substituting silver for gold in reports appears to be yet another method that refiners use to shift money to their pockets.

Harold
 
Rag and Bone,
As of yet...they do not pay for copper.

As for the silver quesion...well...I have never thought about it, becuase I have always seen these amounts of silver on the completed reports.

I had just assumed it was from solder, contacts and such. To my knowlage, these are items not usually processed, or at least discussed to the extent that other materials are here.

I never gave it a second thought back in the 90s when silver was only bring $3.00 or so an oz., but at todays silver prices, this may warrant a closer look.
 
it's not the price of silver that should be the concern, it's that it sounds like some refiners (hopefully not yours) tend to state that there is silver found when it was actually gold.

Does anyone feel that the 5.5oz of gold is a really low number? It sounds to me like this refiner is being honest for the most part. But, if the expectation was to be 10 oz of gold... well, then there is certianly an issue.

Hard for me to think in ounces though, where everything I do results in grams of gold ;-)

Mike B
 
My last 800lb. load had 3oz. gold. This was mostly early 1990s stuff with no fingers. Low and behold, no silver Pd or copper was reported. :evil:
 
I started using Specialty Metals back in the 90s when I happened across a truck load of pin boards at a surplus/salvage yard. The boards were aluminum plate approximately 12x14 inches and full of gold plated pins.

After striking a deal and getting them back to the shop I build a detachable mount for my arbor press and proceeded to punch the pins out of the plate. I ended up with 105lbs of clean pins (this filled a 10 gallon container and man I thought I had hit the lotto).

After contacting several different refineries I decided to send 1 pound of pins to four different refineries with the understanding that they would essay the samples, keep the values that they recovered, but report the values to me. Keep in mind these pins were all visually identical

The results:
One reported $14.00 per pound, two reported approximately $25.00 per pound, and the fourth (Specialty Metals) reported $42.00 per pound... I’ve been using them ever since.
 
Refiners like Specialty Metals, do they just smelt the whole mass down, in a cupola? Crush first?

Out of that 1900 lbs in KdBarkers report above, I'm wondering besides copper how many of the base metals are recoverable (Pb, Sn, maybe Sb and As), along with Tantalum.

And then separating Tin from Lead. A pain.
 
Cupolas are not likely to be the furnace of choice any longer. They are dreadfully dirty to operate. Arc or induction furnaces have taken their place in many instances.

Harold
 
Do you think burning polymers in the PC board, crushing, and then smelting via induction, would be more likely order of operations?
 
For an average sized refinery, the likely order is:
(1) Incineration
(2) Ball milling, to grind the ash.
(3) Screening at about 10-12 mesh, to separate the ash (called pulps) from the metallics.
(4) Melting of the metallics in a gas tilt furnace. Scrap copper is added, if needed, to lower the melting point.
(5) Sampling and assaying of the cast bars and the pulps.
(6) Shipping of the bars and pulps to a primary copper smelter.
 

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